she was sitting in his garden with his aunt.
And he was barely dressed. Fully clothed, but hardly respectable. Morgan would kill him. Provided Graham recovered enough to face anyone ever again.
Seeing Edith’s reaction, Eloise turned and smiled brilliantly. “Graham! Come join us, won’t you? You see that I have met Edith, and we have been walking the gardens. She has been so generous to keep to my pace and insists we rest far too often. I’ve a mind to keep her as my nursemaid; do help me to persuade her.”
Graham informed his feet that they ought to move, and they did so, albeit with a touch of awkwardness, and he forced his hands into his pockets, more to keep them occupied than anything else.
“I don’t believe a woman of such a status as Edith would be acceptable as a nursemaid, Aunt, no matter how qualified she may be.”
Edith swallowed, and her hands twitched as they lay in her lap. “Status is as status does,” she murmured, averting her gaze.
“True enough, dear,” Eloise chimed, smiling at her new friend. “Who said that?”
Edith’s lips pulled into a smile that tugged at something behind Graham’s navel. “Edith Leveson. Widow, Spinster, and Scot.”
“Spinster?” Eloise replied with a laugh. “Darling Edith, you are scarcely twenty-five, if you are a day, and you are a widow. Nothing spinsterly about you.”
Graham quite agreed, but he also knew full well to what Edith was referring. Yet it was not his secret to tell, so he merely remained silent, watching.
“No’ that kind of spinster, Eloise,” she told his aunt. “I write for the Spinster Chronicles. A Society paper in London.”
“Oh, I know all about the Chronicles!” Eloise retorted with a wave of her hand.
“You do?” Edith and Graham said together, sharing a stunned look.
Eloise looked between the two of them. “Of course! Miranda sends every edition on to me. I adore every word. Brava, my dear.”
Edith blinked and looked back at Graham in bewilderment.
He could only shrug. “They are quite clever. I cannot claim to have read every word, but what I have read, I enjoy.”
“I’ll be sure to pass that along,” Edith said with a small smile, her eyes nearly dancing. She looked at Eloise again. “And I am twenty-seven.”
“Pah!” Eloise shook her head, making a face. “Still a child, I’d say.”
“Because you are so aged,” Graham pointed out, giving his aunt a severe look. “I have no idea what makes you a capable judge of age.”
Edith snickered behind a hand, and his eyes flicked to hers as he smiled. The sound of her laughter could have danced on the breeze, and he felt like a fool for thinking so.
A charmed fool, but a fool all the same.
“I am older than my age,” Eloise insisted, narrowing her eyes at him, though her lips still quirked in a smile. “And I am still your aunt. I am entitled to the wisdom of my generation.”
“Your generation.” Graham pretended to consider that, looking up at the sky. “Your generation. Wouldn’t that practically be the same generation to which Edith and I belong, hmm? You are closer in age to us than to your closest sibling, after all.”
Eloise exhaled a short breath through her nose, though he could see her fighting laughter. “You see what I must put up with, Edith? The impudence! What shall I do with him?”
“I canna say,” Edith told her, once more looking at Graham, almost shyly this time. “A bit of impudence has always endeared a body to me, personally. Shows a canny mind, does it not?”
Graham smiled at her, a slow curling of his lips that seemed to cause the same sensation in the soles of his feet. A compliment from Edith was worth any teasing that would be forthcoming from his aunt, and any awkwardness on his part.
The playful streak in the woman was damned attractive.
“I suppose it does,” Eloise admitted reluctantly. She slowly rose, her breathing shifting as she did so in a way Graham did not care for. “Stay right there,” she ordered, pointing a finger at him. “I am only stiff. Edith, will you see me back into the house, love? I believe I have walked enough for the day.”
“Of course,” Edith said at once. “I do not know the way to your rooms, but…”
Eloise waved a hand at her. “I am not going to lay down, my dear, only take some tea. We will go to the parlor and share a pot together. I want to hear all about you without