Free The Countess by Catherine Coulter Page A

handed him over. “Thank you, Brantley.”
    â€œNow, my dear,” Lawrence said, “let’s see to your stomach.”
    We ate in the large formal dining room, the four of us seated around a table that could easily seatsixteen. I was gently placed in the chair at the foot of the table, or the bottom of the table, as my grandfather referred to as the lady’s place, by a footman Brantley called Jasper.
    John sat in the middle of the table, between his uncle and me. Thomas and Amelia sat on the other side opposite John. It was in that moment that I got my first really good look at Thomas. He was surrounded by candlelight.
    I think I probably gasped out loud. Oh, goodness, I tried not to stare, but it was very difficult not to. Thomas was the most beautiful man I had ever seen in my life. He was rather slight of build, fair—unlike his Spanish mother or his brother—and his features were so perfectly formed, going together so flawlessly, that surely Michelangelo would have been mad to sculpt him. While his older brother, John, looked dark, dangerous, hard, and meaner than a mad hound, Thomas looked like an angel. He had thick waving blond hair and summer-blue eyes, nearly the same shade as mine.
    He was simply beautiful, no other way to say it. Finally I saw something that saved him, barely. He had a very stubborn chin, but even that chin of his, tilted at just the right angle, made one want to run one’s fingers over his face and just stare at him. It was disconcerting. I happened to look over at John to see that he’d raised an eyebrow at me.
    â€œSorry,” I said. “I can’t help it.”
    â€œMost ladies can’t,” John said. “Try to contain yourself.”
    â€œI will try.”
    Brantley returned then to direct the serving of the dinner. It was a very formal ritual, one obviouslyperformed many times, much more formal than the one Grandfather and I had always observed. Miss Crislock would doubtless be pleased at this ruthless ceremony. She was the one who kept Grandfather and me to a reasonable dining schedule. She had always insisted that we dress for dinner, something Grandfather and I grumbled about, but did because it was important to her.
    I watched the two footmen, Jasper and Timothy, move silently about the table, making no unnecessary noise at all. They were also so well trained that they easily pretended they weren’t listening when the earl spoke easily of the weather, the state of the grass in the east lawn, or even when he slipped into a more controversial area—the damned Whigs, a never-ending misery to be endured, since they couldn’t be lined up and summarily shot.
    It wasn’t until Brantley nodded the footmen to the far side of the dining room and stood himself against the closed door, that Lawrence turned to John, who had just raised a fork with turkey and chestnut pastry on it, and said, “I had thought you planned to remain at Devbridge. Is there some chance that you will not remain here and begin to learn our estate management?”
    John frowned at his turkey and pasty, ate it, saying nothing until he’d swallowed. He leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms over his chest, and said very deliberately, “You have just married a young lady, Uncle, a very young lady. She appears immensely healthy. It seems obvious that there will be an heir in the not-too-distant future. I can now see no reason for me to learn how to manage the estates. You will raise your future son just as an heir should be raised.The lad will doubtless know all the estate management he needs to know by the time he is twelve. There will be no need for me to hang about, cluttering up the dining table.”
    Lawrence raised his wineglass to me and silently shook his head. He said to John, his voice as cold as a late winter wind howling over the Yorkshire moors, “I have said this before, and I will say it again. You, John, are my heir. You