UTTING on a little weight, aren’t you, puss?” Anthony asked as he kissed Reggie’s cheek and then sat down next to her on the lawn. “Must be eating because you’re miserable. And no wonder, living with that cold fish.”

Reggie put down her sketch pad and smiled fondly at her uncle. “If you mean Miriam, she’s not so bad. After our first two rows, we reached an agreement. We simply don’t speak to each other.”

“I suppose that’s one way to get along with someone,” Anthony replied in his driest tone.

Reggie laughed delightedly. “Oh, Tony, I’ve missed you this last month. I really did expect you sooner. Everyone else has been here.”

“You wouldn’t have cared to see me right after I heard what was going on. It has taken me this long to cool off.”

She sighed. “I suppose you wanted to kill him again?”

“Damned right. I tried to find the blackguard but he has disappeared.”

“I could have saved you the trouble of looking,” she told him levelly. “He told me he was leaving England. I guess he meant it.”

Anthony’s temper rose. “We had better talk of something else, puss. Your husband is not my favorite subject. What is that you’re drawing?”

Reggie handed over her sketch pad. “Just a hound chasing falling leaves. He ran off into the woods a few minutes before you arrived. I’ve been getting some good poses of the gardeners, though, and the grooms exercising the horses.” He turned the pages and admired her work. “That’s Sir Tyrwhitt, a neighbor,” she said when he got to her sketch of a middle-aged dandy. “Would you believe he and the Countess—?”

“No!”

“Well, I don’t know for certain, mind you, but she’s like a different person around him, actually girlish, if you can believe that.”

“I can’t,” he said firmly.

Reggie laughed. “And that’s Squire Gibbs and his young wife Faith. I like her a lot. Miriam is furious that she and I have become friends. An invitation to Silverley has always been an honor, you see, and so when I gave Faith an open welcome, the Countess took to her room for two days to express her displeasure.”

“Likes to lord it over the lesser gentry, does she?” he asked.

“Oh, she’s very serious about it, Tony.”

Anthony turned another page. “Good God, who are those characters?”

“Two of the gardeners, I guess. There are so many servants here I haven’t met them all yet. I drew these men yesterday down by the lake.”

“You must have been particularly gloomy yesterday. You made them look so sinister.”

Reggie shrugged. “It wasn’t my mood. They were sinister-looking. They moved on when they saw me drawing them, so I had to finish the sketch from memory.”

“They look like waterfront brawlers,” he said, “not gardeners.”

“Oh, stuff. All the people here are really nice, once you get to know them.”

“Except the cold fish.”

“Don’t be unkind, Tony. I don’t think she’s led a very happy life.”

“That’s no excuse for forcing her unhappiness on others. And speaking of—”

“Don’t,” she said stonily. “I’m perfectly fine, Tony, really.”

“You can’t lie to me, puss. Look at you. You wouldn’t be putting on weight if you were exercising, and the only time you mope about and ignore your health is when you’re unhappy. I know you, remember? You’re just like your mother in certain ways. But you don’t have to stay here, you know that. You can come home.”

“I know I’ve made a mistake, Tony, but I don’t want the world to know it. Do you understand?”

“For his sake?” he asked sharply.

“No,” she replied, then added hesitantly,

“The weight you keep harping on isn’t what you think, Tony. I’m pregnant.”

There was a moment’s startled silence. Then he said, “You can’t know this soon. You’ve only been married a month.”

“I am pregnant, Tony. Very, very pregnant.”

His cobalt-blue eyes, so like hers, grew wide, then narrowed furiously. “He didn’t! I’ll kill him!”

“No, you won’t,” she replied, vetoing his favorite solution. “This is going to be your first great-nephew or niece. How could you explain to the child that you’d killed his father?”

“He deserves a sound beating at the very least,” growled her uncle.

“Perhaps,” she agreed. “But not for seducing me before the wedding. I was a willing participant in the making of this child.”

“Don’t bother defending him, puss. You forget he’s just like me and I know all the tricks. He seduced you.”

“But I knew exactly what I was doing,” she insisted. “I… it was foolish in the extreme, I know that now, but I thought it would help to change his attitude. He kept trying to get me to break the engagement, you see. He never deceived me into thinking he was willing to marry me.”

“He agreed!”

“Yes, but he thought he could make me jilt him before the wedding.”

“You should have.”

“Should haves don’t count, Tony.”

“I know, I know, but blister it, Reggie, how could he desert you, knowing—”

“I never told him! You don’t think I would try to keep a man that way, do you?” She sounded genuinely shocked.

“Oh,” Anthony said, brought up short. Then he said somberly, “Honestly, puss, you really are just like your mother. Melissa gave birth to you only a few months after her wedding, too.”

Reggie gasped. “Really? But… why didn’t any of you tell me that?”

Anthony turned red and looked away. “Well, were we to say, ‘By the way, dear, you only just made legitimacy.’ ”

She giggled and leaned over to kiss his cheek. “Well, thank you for telling me. I’m glad to know I’m not the only promiscuous one in the family—besides Uncle Jason, I mean,” she teased.

“Promiscuous! At least your father didn’t desert Melissa. He adored her. He would have married her sooner if her stiff-necked pride hadn’t kept them apart.”

“I never heard any of this,” she whispered, shocked.

“They had some terrible rows, they did. She broke the engagement three times, swearing each time that she never wanted to see him again.”

“But everyone always told me how much they loved each other,” Reggie protested.

“They did, puss,” he assured her. “But she was as hot-tempered as I am. The slightest little disagreement got out of hand. Thank God you didn’t inherit that from her.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Reggie mused. “If he ever does come back, I’m not going to forgive him. He made me love him, and then he wouldn’t even give our marriage a chance. I do have some pride, even if I did practically beg him not to leave. My love has turned to… well, it infuriates me even to think about him.”

“Good for you. Think about coming home, will you? There’s no reason you can’t be with your family for the birth. We’ll keep outsiders well away from you.”

“Well, I do have Meg, and I—”

“Think about it,” he ordered sternly.

She grinned at him. “Yes, uncle.”