Hero donned a pretty green jacket with Wesley’s help.
Wesley stood back to admire her work and nodded, satisfied. “My Lord Mandeville will be quite taken with you today, my lady.”
Hero smiled slightly. “Thank you, Wesley.”
She descended the stairs and found Mandeville already waiting for her in the sitting room.
“My dear,” he said as she entered. “Your beauty puts the sun to shame.”
She curtsied. “Thank you, my lord.”
“And how are the wedding plans progressing?” he asked as he guided her from the sitting room and down the front steps. “I hear the dress is nearly finished.”
“Yes, only a few more fittings.” Hero glanced at Mandeville curiously. This might be the most personal interest he’d ever shown in her. “Your mother told you before she left?”
He nodded and he helped her into his open carriage. “My mother loves a wedding. You should’ve seen the flurry she was in when Caroline was married. I think her only disappointment now is that a son does not require a trousseau.”
Hero glanced at her hands folded in her lap and hid a smile at the thought of Mandeville being outfitted in new stockings and chemises. “I quite like your mother. She’s been a great help with the wedding plans.”
“I am happy to hear it.” He concentrated on the ribbons for a moment, guiding his lovely matched bays into the crowded London street.
Hero tilted her face up surreptitiously. The sun was out today, a welcome last stand of autumn. The London traffic ebbed and flowed around the carriage in a giant stream. A heavy miller’s cart trudged along ahead of them, and sedan chairmen deftly wove in and out of slower pedestrians, their passengers jogging along in upright boxes. A few soldiers on horses clattered by, ignoring the shouted insults of a pair of butcher’s boys who’d been splattered by the horses’ hooves. A single tattered woman bawled a song by the side of the road, her two children at her feet with hands outstretched.
“She likes you, you know,” Mandeville said.
“Your mother?”
“Yes.” He slapped the reins as the carriage cleared the miller’s cart, and the horses stepped into a trot. “She has a dowager house, naturally, but I find it’s easier if the two of you get along.”
“Of course,” Hero murmured. She straightened the edge of her glove. “Did she like your first wife?”
Mandeville glanced at her warily. “You mean Anne?”
Was it such an odd question? “Yes.”
He shrugged, returning his gaze to the horses. “Mother manages to get along with nearly everyone, it seems. She never showed any outward dislike or disapproval.”
“Did she show any approval, though?”
“No.”
She watched him for a moment as he handled the reins with expert ease. He was a private man, she knew, but in only weeks they would be man and wife. “Did you love her?”
He flinched as if she’d said something obscene. “My dear…”
“I know it’s none of my business,” she said softly. “But you never speak of her to me. I just would like to know.”
“I see.” He was silent a moment, a slight frown between his eyebrows. “Then I shall endeavor to assuage your curiosity. I was… fond of Anne and quite sad when she died, but I hold no disappointed love for her. You need have no worries there.”
She nodded. “And Reading?”
“What about him?”
“I’m afraid I’ve heard the rumors,” Hero said carefully. She remembered Reading’s own reply on the matter when she pressed him about whether he’d seduced his brother’s wife. No, God, no. “Do you truly believe your brother could’ve betrayed you so?”
“I don’t have to believe,” he said very drily. “Anne herself told me.”
* * *
THOMAS WATCHED HIS fiancée’s delicately curved eyebrows arch in surprise and felt irritation crawl under his skin. What had she thought? That he’d harbored some insane suspicion without any evidence?
And why the hell was she quizzing him anyway?
He faced forward again, guiding the bays around a shepherd with a herd of sheep milling in the middle of the road. They were nearing Hyde Park, and he longed for the open air. Wished he could give the bays their heads and let them run wildly down the lane.
Hardly a fitting activity for a marquess.
“I’m sorry,” Lady Hero murmured beside him, quietly contrite.
Well, even the most perfect of women became emotional once in a while. They could hardly help it, made the way they were. Anne had been a mercurial creature. Lavinia was passionate, but more controlled. In comparison to them, Hero was a model of restraint, really.