Valentine by Jane Feather

the Belmont inheritance?”
    His hand shot out along the glowing surface of the table, and his fingers closed around her wrist. “Yes,” he said softly. “That is exactly what you are going to do, cousin. And shall I tell you why? You’re going to do it because you love this house and this land, and you won’t be able to endure watching me make mistakes.”
    He released his grip and sat back again, his cool gray eyes regarding her over the lip of his glass. “So let us begin with the Gentlemen.”
    How did he know that about her? It was true, she wouldn’t be able to sit back and watch while he put up the backs of the tenants because he didn’t know some small but vital personal detail, or made the wrong decision about a field or a copsebecause he didn’t know the idiosyncracies of the land. The prospect of watching him make a fool of himself should have pleased her—but not at the expense of her land and her people.
    But how had he guessed that?
    “I know a lot more about you, cousin, than you might imagine,” he said, as if he’d read her thoughts. He sat forward again, stretching a hand across the table to catch her chin. “I suspect we’re alarmingly alike.”
    “Never!”
she declared with low-voiced ferocity.
    “Except that I seem to be able to control my temper rather better,” he said carelessly, half standing so that he could lean forward and reach her mouth with his own.
    She tried to turn her head aside, but his fingers tightened on her chin, and with a curious sinking sensation Theo yielded to a kiss that was rapidly becoming familiar. Except that this time she was aware of a power behind the pressure of his lips on hers and a responding power in her own body that seemed to leap through her veins.
    “There,” he said, drawing back with a smile. “Point made, I believe. We’ll leave further discussion for a new day, I think. You shall tell me about the Gentlemen when we ride around the estate in the morning. Let’s join your mother and sisters.”
    He pushed back his chair and came round the table, politely drawing her chair out for her. Theo felt as if she’d been picked up by a tornado, hurled into distant space, and dropped again into a disrupted world where everything was upside down.
    Elinor looked up from her embroidery as they entered the drawing room. “Tea, Lord Stoneridge?”
    “Thank you, ma’am.” He took a cup and strolled over to the pianoforte, where Clarissa was sitting at the keyboard. “May I turn the music for you, cousin?”
    She gave him a quick smile. “If you can bear to hear my rumblings, sir.”
    He merely smiled, shaking his head in mock reproof forher modesty, and Theo blinked as her sister flushed delicately. It seemed as if he was beginning to resemble Clarry’s parfit knight. How many parts could the damnable man play?
    She took her own cup and sat down beside her mother, listening to her sister, who was an accomplished pianist. It was a remarkably domestic scene, she observed acidly to herself, her mother and Emily tranquilly occupied with their embroidery, the soft notes of the piano carrying through the open doors to the terrace, the earl’s long fingers turning the sheets of music with perfect timing, his dark head bent close to her sister’s brown curls. All it needed was a dog on the hearth and a kitten with a ball of wool.
    Clarissa was persuaded by the earl to sing a folk song, a performance as accomplished as her playing, before she laughingly begged to be excused from any further performance.
    “Cousin Theo, may we hear you?” Stoneridge asked courteously, gesturing to the vacant piano bench.
    Theo shook her head. “You wouldn’t enjoy it, my lord. I am an indifferent player at best.”
    “But, then, you have other talents.” He replaced the lid over the keys and strolled across to the sofa.
    “Indeed, she does, my lord,” Emily said swiftly. “No one is as accomplished a rider, for instance, and she has a head for figures that