Duke and His Duchess by Grace Burrowes

rectangle on the wall where a painting had hung.
    In the harsh light of day, the decor had deteriorated significantly.
    “I’m well enough. I hear you are a papa now.” She led him to a sofa Percival recognized from his visits here more than five years ago. He sat as gingerly as he could, having taken his pleasure of the lady more than once upon its cushions.
    This sortie was proving damned awkward, but sending a note would not do.
    “I am blessed with four healthy sons, if you can believe it.”
    She considered him. Her hair was still a rich, dark auburn, her eyes a marvelous green. Even without her paint and powder—especially without it—she was a beautiful woman, and yet… the bloom was off her. She’d been, in cavalry parlance, ridden hard and put away wet too many times, and all the coin in the world could not compensate her for that.
    “And your lady wife? How does she fare?”
    The question was a polite reminder that Kathleen St. Just did not permit married men among her intimate admirers—or she hadn’t five years ago. Percival had liked that about her—respected her for it.
    “It’s about my lady wife that I have presumed to come to you.”
    He rose, the damned sofa being no place to discuss Esther’s problems.
    “Are you sure you wouldn’t like something to drink, my lord?”
    My lord? She’d seldom my-lorded him in the past, but there was comfort in the use of the title now. Kathleen was a fundamentally considerate woman, something he hadn’t appreciated enough as a younger man.
    “Nothing, thank you.” He paced away from her to peer out her back window. In spring, her tiny yard was a riot of flowers, but now it was a bleak patch of dead, tangled foliage and bare earth, with a streak of dirty snow by the back fence. “I need advice, Kathleen, and information, and I cannot seek them from the usual sources.”
    “I will not gossip with you, my lord. Not about anybody. I know how you lordly types like to revile one another by day then toast one another by night.”
    He turned and smiled at her. “You know, my wife frequently takes that same starchy tone with me. I have always admired a formidable woman.”
    He’d confused her with that compliment. Beautifully arched brows drew down. “Perci—my lord, what are you doing here?”
    He admired women who could be direct, too.
    “My lady wife is sickening for something, and she won’t consult a physician. She didn’t refuse me outright when I suggested it, but she has a way of not refusing that is a refusal. Whatever’s wrong with her, it’s female. You always had a tisane or a plaster to recommend when I was under the weather, and your remedies usually worked.”
    Kathleen left the sofa too and went to the sideboard. None of the decanters were full—in fact, they each sported only a couple of inches of drink. Her hands on the glass were pale and elegant, though the image struck Percival as cold, too. He swung his gaze to the bleak little back garden, where a small boy was now engaged in making snowballs out of the dirty snow.
    “You love your wife, I take it?” In the detachment of her tone, Percival understood that the question was painful for a woman who would likely never marry and never have any pretensions to respectability again.
    He kept his gaze on the small boy pelting the back fence with dirty snowballs. The boy had good aim, leaving a neat row of white explosions against the stone wall at exactly the same height. “I love my wife very much, else I would not be here.”
    Kathleen said nothing for a moment while the snowballs hit the wall, one after another. “Describe her symptoms.”
    He did as best he could while the boy ran out of ammunition and knelt in the snow and mud to make more.
    “Is she enceinte?”
    Percival shook his head, much more comfortable watching the busy little soldier in the back garden than meeting Kathleen’s gaze. “She doesn’t smell as if she’s carrying.”
    Kathleen came to stand at his