“Oh? Oh, of course!” Her face brightened. “The Westmore stables. Your horses are coveted.”
He smiled at the sheer regard in her voice. “They are fine animals.”
She nodded at that, but her grin faded, the frown returned. Collin could almost hear the click of her mind turning over some troubling detail. “Your surname is different than John’s…I’d assumed you had a different father, but you said something—”
“I’m a bastard.”
Her eyes widened at the blunt words, and Collin caught George’s cringe at the edge of his vision. He waited to see what the duke’s daughter would think of dining with a bastard. Blue eyes narrowed and Collin felt his eyes narrow in turn, but then she smiled—a smile that widened as the seconds ticked past.
“Oh, my. A bastard. However did you become a baron?”
“My father purchased a Scottish barony in a fit of guilt. I’m not the least bit respectable.”
“Well, you are in good company then. A bastard, a harlot, and a witch. I’m afraid that George is the only truly respectable one at the table.”
Lucy tried to smother a laugh and snorted instead.
Collin raised an eyebrow at the indiscreet sound. “Cousin, I had no idea you were a witch.” Lucy’s eyes flew wide and her husband’s chuckle ended on an alarmingly choked cough. Collin’s brow tightened at the feeling he’d misstepped.
Dessert arrived in the form of glazed berries and cream. The servants retreated. Silence hung heavy over the room.
Then Alexandra smiled sweetly across the table, adding to Collin’s unease. “Now, my dear Lord Westmore,” she said, hands spreading to gesture around the table, “whoever said that I was the harlot?”
The air grew stifling and drew heat that spread in a tingling burn over his cheeks. Christ, he’d just called the woman a whore at the supper table. His mouth fell open of its own accord; nothing emerged. He closed it, tried to think of something—anything—to say. Alexandra’s mask of innocence suddenly dissolved into a fit of laughter.
Lucy snorted again. “Really, Alex, that was quite cruel.”
“His face.” She gestured toward Collin.
Surely he couldn’t get any more red. The heat spread to his ears. “I suppose I deserved that.”
“Oh, you did!” she laughed, leaning toward him. Despite everything, the shadow of her cleavage still caught his attention. He clenched his teeth, wondered if it would be bad form to flee the room as he’d fled her bedchamber. He grabbed his wine instead and raised the glass toward her before draining it.
“Oh, that was well worth any grudge you may hold against me now.”
“No grudge,” Collin conceded. “What I implied was inexcusable.”
George’s smile was sympathetic if a little weak. “These two are too quick for the male mind to follow, but really, you waltzed into that one.”
Collin tipped his head in agreement, gave a helpless shrug. “Well, Cousin, whether you are a witch or a harlot, I would hear the story.”
“I am the witch, or was. But there is no harlot here, and I will hear no more talk of it.”
Alexandra rolled her eyes and grinned.
“When George and I married, Alex was only eight—”
“Nine!” she called.
“Pardon me. Lady Alexandra Huntington was a mature young woman of nine.”
She chuckled, the sound brushing Collin’s spine.
“She had a rather fierce crush on George—”
“My grown cousin!”
“—and she found it difficult to like me. In fact, I believe to this very day that she plotted my murder.”
“Not true. I only wanted to run you off.”
“Well, thankfully I’d said my vows just before I met her, or I may very well have abandoned him.” Lucy flashed her husband a tender smile that belied her words.
“So what did you do, Lady Alexandra?” Collin asked. Her naughty smile made him want to groan.
“I only played a prank. Lucy didn’t find it amusing.”
“She put a mouse in my bridal bed!”
Alexandra and George collapsed into laughter.
“You should have seen her, Collin,” George gasped. “So delightfully shy and pink, then shrieking about the room without a stitch, all modesty out the window!”
“George!” But his wife laughed too, and Collin couldn’t help but chuckle.
“That must have been a sight for a new bridegroom.”
“Oh, it was. I was so enthused that she accused me of planting the rodent myself. I will say I wasn’t quite as upset with Alex as I should have been.”
“We didn’t know who’d done it, of course, or even if it’d been happenstance…until our farewell breakfast the next morning. In walks little Alex, looking quite pleased with herself, until she spots me and howls, ‘Why are you still here?’”
“Oh, I’d convinced myself she’d hie back to wherever she’d come from, and I’d have George all to my own again.”
“Well, I knew immediately it was her, and I dragged her by her ear out to the garden to give her a stern talking to. The girl never even blinked. She had no fear.”
Collin wasn’t surprised. She’d likely never been denied a thing in her life. “So you told her you were a witch?”
“I did.” Lucy still looked smug, ten years later. “I was only seventeen, you know. But you’ll remember my family, Collin. Children crawling from every nook and cranny. I knew I had to put a fear in her. So I told her I’d already roasted the mouse and cut off its tail and ears. Told her all I had to do was mash them up with a little blood of a bat and slip that into her porridge…She’d turn into a mouse before the next full moon.”
“And what did you say, Lady Alexandra?”
She turned pink when his eyes locked with hers. “I told Lucy to eat horse dung and ran to find my nurse.” Her smile went naughty again, tightening the muscles of his stomach. “Then I decided that George was not my true love after all.”
“I made an impression on her. She didn’t come near me for two years.”
George reached out to pat Alexandra’s hand with a proud smile. “Not the most trouble you’ve ever caused, but—” As soon as the words left his mouth, his face paled. “I meant…”
“Come now, George,” Alex murmured. “None of that. Not among friends.” She raised her glass of wine. “A toast. To memories of old times!”
Lucy laughed and drank with her. “She says that so convincingly for a girl no more than nineteen.”
“To memories,” George added, slanting a sly grin at his wife.
Collin raised his glass and smiled at Alexandra’s hearty, “Here, here!” Her eyes sparkled with laughter and her cheeks were flushed from the wine. She glowed.
She glanced his way and he watched her eyes dart away from his stare. But only a heartbeat passed before they slid back to him. Her mouth smiled a softer smile. He drank in the sight of her pink cheeks and pinker lips. He watched her gaze fall to his mouth and felt his blood rush low in response. Not good. Not good at all.
George cleared his throat, jerking Collin’s eyes away from her lovely face to meet the speculative look. Collin shifted, coughed, tried not to feel