Tremaine's True Love by Grace Burrowes

aisle.
    “The issue is not what you want, Bellefonte,” Tremaine said, “but rather what your womenfolk want. I have not detected matrimonial interest from them.” Interest, yes, the same interest with which the ewes looked over a new collie or watched a horseman canter by, but not matrimonial interest. Nobody was in marital rut in this household, excepting perhaps Bellefonte himself.
    “Edward Nash is heir to a baronet,” Bellefonte said. “His papa and mine rode to hounds together, and our pews are situated across the aisle from each other. He owns a tidy holding not two miles distant—Stonebridge—and he quotes poetry to Susannah.”
    Tremaine had ridden by that tidy holding and recalled the property because the sign naming it was anything but discreet.
    “Nash offers to relieve you of a sister, while I offer you only money. What a credit to your priorities, Bellefonte.”
    Bellefonte’s reputation was one of unfailing good cheer, though his blue eyes had abruptly turned colder than the skies over Kent.
    “Nash offers to make my sister happy . Susannah is retiring in the extreme. She didn’t take, and she loves her books. I love—”
    Pity for the earl required that Tremaine make a study of the library’s red, blue, and cream carpets, which were wool, probably Scottish wool. The sheep suited to northern climes grew a coarse, durable product that could withstand years of trampling.
    “You love your sisters, my lord, and the prospect of seeing Lady Susannah across the church aisle every Sunday is less daunting than the notion that she might catch the eye of some Italian count.”
    Or, heaven defend the lady, a Scottish wool nabob?
    “Nash’s sister dwells with him too,” Bellefonte said, turning another quarter, so he faced the fire. “Susannah wouldn’t be the sole female in his household. She’d have children in due course, and what woman doesn’t want children?”
    Addy Chalmers, for one.
    Tremaine’s own mother, possibly, though in Bellefonte’s world, women sought husbands as a necessary predicate to having children.
    “Bellefonte, you must do as you see fit with your sheep. I am prepared to buy the entire herd, but only the entire herd. Their value decreases significantly if you send one-third down the lane as Lady Susannah’s bridal attendants and another third to sale in London. The remaining third will be in far less demand for breeding purposes if you disperse your herd, and I’ll have fewer specimens with which to improve my own stock, which is vast.”
    Bellefonte wandered to the desk, where he lifted the lid off a blue ceramic bowl and brought the dish to Tremaine.
    “Have a ginger biscuit,” the earl said. “Haggling on an empty stomach isn’t well advised.”
    Tremaine took one. Bellefonte helped himself to three, put the dish back on the desk, and moved to the shelves lining the inside wall of the library.
    “My countess likes you,” the earl said, “my brothers like you. I think Nita might like you too.”
    Ah, so all that dodging about the sheep, and poor, shy Lady Susannah had been so much diversion. Tremaine took a nibble of a spicy biscuit lest he admit that he liked Lady Nita.
    Respected her too.
    “Lady Nita was simply looking in on a woman recently brought to bed with child,” Tremaine said. “I wanted to see some of your property and accomplished that aim.”
    Bellefonte left off perusing a small volume bound in red leather, and considered one of his two remaining biscuits.
    “You were spying on my acres?”
    “Gathering information about a possible business associate. Have you broached the matter of Lady Nita’s upcoming travel with the woman herself?”
    Not that Tremaine would raise the topic with her or mention it to Beckman. He hoped to be gone before Bellefonte undertook that folly.
    “Nita will never forgive me if I send her away,” the earl said, “but spring can bring influenza and worse, and she has no care for what contagion could do to this