Anne smiled down at her son as they waited for the butler to open the door. He was growing up fast, she thought ruefully. He was no longer an infant.

He behaved rather like one, though, when they stepped inside and could see that the marquess was coming down the stairs to meet them, grinning cheerfully. David dashed toward him, all childish eagerness and voluble chatter, and was swept off his feet and spun about in a circle while he laughed joyfully.

Anne, looking on, felt an almost painful constriction about the heart. She had poured out a mother’s love on her son for nine years, but of course she had never been able to provide him with a father’s love too.

“Lad,” the marquess said, setting David back down on his feet, “you must have a few bricks in the sole of each shoe. You weigh a ton. Or maybe it is just that you are growing up. Let me see now. You must be…twelve?”

“No!” David chuckled gleefully.

“Never tell me you are thirteen?”

“No! I am nine!”

“Nine? Only nine? I am speechless with amazement.” The marquess ruffled David’s hair with one hand and turned his smile on Anne.

“Joshua,” she said, “how good it is to see you.”

He was a tall, well-formed man, with blond hair, a handsome, good-natured face, and blue eyes that almost constantly smiled. Anne had always loved him with feelings that had occasionally bordered on the romantic, though she had never allowed them to spill over into passion. As plain Joshua Moore he had also been her friend when she was a governess at his aunt and uncle’s house and after she had been dismissed. His friendship had been of infinitely more worth to her than any unrequited passion might have been.

Besides, she had loved another man when she first became acquainted with Joshua Moore. She had even had an understanding with that man and considered herself betrothed to him.