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  That long, flowery speech won a hesitant, confused smile from Sherry, who had crouched down to adjust the bulky bandage on the little boy’s arm. “What Mr. Damson means,” Colfax, the butler, translated with a disgusted look at the valet, “is that we all enjoyed this evening very much, miss, and that we would be deeply appreciative if you might extend it just a little.”

  The little boy rolled his eyes at the butler and the valet, then beamed at Sherry, who was at his eye level, frowning at whatever she saw beneath the bandage. “They mean, may we sing another song, please, miss?”

  “Oh.” Sheridan laughed, and Stephen saw her wink conspiratorially at the butler and valet as she straightened and said, “Is that what you meant?”

  “Indeed,” said the valet, glowering huffily at the butler.

  “I know it is what I meant,” the butler retorted.

  “Well, can we?” the little boy said.

  “Yes,” she said, sitting down at the kitchen table and drawing him onto her lap, “but I’ll listen to you this time, so that I can learn another of your songs.” She looked at Hodgkin, who was beaming at her and waiting for further suggestion. “I think that first song, Mr. Hodgkin—the one you all sang for me about ‘a snowy Christmas night with a Yule log burning bright.’ ”

  Hodgkin nodded, held up his thin hands for silence, waved his arms dramatically, and the servants instantly burst into exuberant song. Stephen scarcely noticed. He was watching Sherry smile at the little boy in her lap and whisper something to him, then she lifted her hand to his cheek, gently cradling his smudged face to the bodice of her gown. The picture they made together was one of such eloquent maternal tenderness that it snapped Stephen out of his distraction, and he stepped forward, inexplicably anxious to banish the image from his mind. “Is it Christmas already?” he said, strolling into the midst of the cozy scenario.

  If he’d been holding loaded guns in both hands, his presence couldn’t have had a more dampening, galvanizing effect on the merry occupants of the room. Fifty servants stopped singing and began backing out of the room, bumping into each other in their haste to scatter. Even the child in Sherry’s lap wriggled away before she could catch him. Only Colfax, Damson, and Hodgkin made a more dignified—but very cautious—retreat and bowed their way out of the room.

  “They are quite terrified of you, aren’t they?” Sherry asked, so happy that he’d returned early that she was beaming at him.

  “Not enough to stay at their posts, evidently,” Stephen retorted, then he smiled in spite of himself because she looked so guilty.

  “That was my doing.”

  “I assumed it was.”

  “How did you know?”

  “My magnificent powers of deduction,” he said with an exaggerated bow. “I have never heard them sing, or ever come home to an empty house until tonight.”

  “I felt at loose ends and decided to explore a little. When I wandered in here, Ernest—the little boy—had just put his arm against one of those kettles and burned it.”

  “And so you decided to cheer him by organizing all the servants into a choir?”

  “No, I did that because everyone seemed to be as much in need of a little cheering as I was.”

  “Were you feeling ill?” Stephen asked worriedly, scanning her face. She looked fine. Very fine. Lovely and vibrant—and embarrassed.

  “No. I was . . .”

  “Yes?” he prompted when she hesitated.

  “I was sorry you were gone.”

  Her candid answer made his heart lurch in surprise . . . and something else, some other feeling he couldn’t identify. And didn’t want to try. On the other hand, for the moment she was his fiancée, and so it seemed both appropriate, and pleasurable, to lean down and press a kiss to her flushed cheek, despite the fact that he had vowed in that same hour to maintain a completely platonic relationship from that moment on. And if the kiss drifted to her lips, and his hands caught her shoulders, drawing her closer for a moment, then that, too, seemed harmless enough. What was not appropriate or harmless was the instantaneous response of his sated body when she pressed lightly against him and put her hand against his chest or the tender thought that suddenly sprang to his mind . . . I missed you tonight.

  Stephen released her as if his hands were burned and stepped back, but he kept his expression bland so that his confused annoyance wouldn’t show. He was so preoccupied that he automatically complied when she suggested he wait while she fixed them something to drink.

  When she had the cups and pot arranged on a tray, Sheridan returned to the table and sat down across from him.

  She propped her chin in her hands and studied him with a slight smile while Stephen watched the way the firelight glinted on her hair and made her cheeks glow. “It must be exhausting work being an earl,” she remarked. “How did you become one?”

  “An earl?”

  She nodded, glanced at the pot and got up quickly. “The other night, after supper, you mentioned that you have an older brother who is a duke, and then you said you inherited your titles by default.”

  “I was being glib,” Stephen answered idly, his attention pulled inevitably to her quick, graceful movements as she readied whatever she was preparing. “My brother inherited the ducal title and several others through our father. Mine came to me from an uncle. Under the terms of a Letters Patent and a special remainder granted to one of my ancestors generations ago, the earls of Langford were allowed to designate the heir to their titles if they were childless.”

  She gave him a distracted smile and nodded, and Stephen realized with a jolt that she wasn’t particularly interested in a topic that was normally a matter of avid fascination to every unwed female of his acquaintance.

  “The chocolate is ready,” she said, picking up a heavy tray laden with a pot, cups, spoons, and several delicate pastries she’d evidently discovered in a cupboard.

  “I hope you like it. I seem to know exactly how to make it,” she said, putting the tray into his hands as if it were perfectly natural for him to march about bearing it. “Only I don’t know whether I make it well or not.” She looked thoroughly pleased that she remembered how to make the drink, but it struck Stephen as a little odd that she would know how to perform a task that was always relegated to the servants. On the other hand, she was American, and perhaps American women were more familiar with kitchens than their English counterparts.

  “I hope you like it,” she repeated dubiously as they headed toward the front of the house.

  “I’m sure I will,” Stephen replied dishonestly. The last time he’d drunk hot chocolate, he’d been in leading strings. These days, his preferences ran toward a glass of aged brandy at this hour. Afraid she’d somehow read his thoughts, he added for emphasis, “It smells delicious. All that singing about snow and Yule logs must have whetted my appetite for it.”

  19

  Stephen carried the ornate silver tray down the hall, past three gaping footmen, to the drawing room. Colfax was at his regular station near the front door, and he rushed forward with the obvious intent of prying the tray loose from him, but Stephen stopped him with a mocking remark to the effect that they had already fended for themselves without any help and he saw no reason to change that, now that most of the work was already done.

  They were halfway into the drawing room when the door knocker was raised and lowered with emphatic regularity. Stephen had given instructions that all callers were to be informed he was not in, and he paid the sound no heed, but an instant later, he heard a chorus of cheerful voices that made him groan inwardly.

  “He most certainly is at home, Colfax,” Stephen’s mother was telling the butler. “When we arrived in London two hours ago, there was a note from him announcing his intention to remove to the country. If we had not arrived several days early, he would have been gone. Now, where is he hiding himself?”

  Swearing under his breath, Stephen turned just as his brother, his brother’s wife, and a friend of hers accompanied his mo