“I shall look forward to meeting them,” she said, and turned to smile at her husband with that warmth that always made Lord Eden vaguely envious.

“Lady Madeline Raine has the same green eyes as Eden,” the captain said. “She is far prettier than he is, though.”

They both laughed.

Lord Eden took one more appreciative glance at Miss Simpson before bowing and taking his leave. Yes, she was very pretty indeed. And very much his type.

THE EARL AND COUNTESS of Amberley and Lady Madeline Raine were gathered in the drawing room of the house they had rented in Brussels, waiting for Lord Eden’s arrival for tea. The earl’s infant son and daughter were with them, Lady Caroline Raine in her aunt’s arms, staring unblinkingly up at her, Viscount Cleeves crawling under chairs and tables, intent on some quiet game of his own.

“How can such tiny fingers be so perfect?” Madeline said, spreading the baby’s fingers over one of her own. “Oh, Alexandra, I am so envious of you at times.”

The Earl of Amberley lowered his paper and looked over the top of it at his sister. “You have no need to be, Madeline,” he said. “You could have a nursery full of your own children by now. The Duke of Wellington could make up a separate regiment of all the suitors you have had and rejected in the last seven or eight years. You could have been married twenty times over.”

“I know,” she said. “I suppose I am just not the marrying kind, Edmund. Perhaps there will be someone quite irresistible at the duke’s ball, and I shall live happily ever after with him.”

“I thought you were already interested in Colonel Huxtable,” the countess said.

“I am,” Madeline said. “At least I am interested in his uniform. I am quite in love with it, in fact.” She laughed and returned her attention to the baby.