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her, and then after… Hay Bothwell had saved her life, her sanity, and her soul, just as he’d also broken her heart.
    “You look preoccupied this morning.” Lily Prentiss, Avis’s companion, stood in the parlor doorway.
    “The morning has been busy. Fenwick met with the shepherds and is off to confirm shearing plans with Landover, and I tarried too long on my constitutional and haven’t started on the correspondence yet.”
    “It’s a pretty day,” Lily said, advancing into the room on a swish of pale blue skirts. She was blond, well formed, and less than a decade Avis’s senior, and the blue looked good on her. “You can be forgiven for spending time out in the fresh air, though wandering on your own will never be a good idea.”
    “I didn’t leave Blessings, and I stayed within shouting distance of the stables.”
And you are not my gaoler.
    “If you say so.” Lily’s tone was diffident, not quite deferential, nor would Avis have wanted it to be.
    “Are those menus?”
    “I went ahead and brought them up.” Lily passed along the papers in her hand. “It’s Tuesday, and cook will be asking.”
    “I’d like to have the Bothwell brothers over for Sunday dinner.” Avis leafed through the menus and shuffled Sunday’s to the top.
    “Brothers? Do you mean Landover and Lord James?”
    “Lord James was Harold’s guest,” Avis explained. “Or he often has been, but no, not Lord James, but rather, Hadrian Bothwell.”
    Lily took a seat in one of the rockers. “I’ve been here nearly ten years, Avis, and I’ve never met Landover’s brother. Let me guess, this brother has eight sons and that explains Harold’s unwillingness to marry.”
    “No sons.” Avis scratched notes on Sunday’s menu to add two guests to the number expected. Lily had been with her only seven years, which somehow had started equating to a decade. “Hadrian Bothwell is ordained and a widower. Shall we have rice or potatoes?”
    “Rice. More exotic than sorry old mashed potatoes.”
    “But potatoes lend themselves so nicely to cheese.” This was what Avis’s life had come down to: choosing vegetables and hoping her dinner invitation would not be politely refused.
    “So it’s the brother we must find a wife for?”
    “Hadrian is quite capable of finding his own wife.” As he had proven handily. Avis wrinkled her nose, second-guessing her selection. “Worthy vegetables are such a challenge this time of year.”
    “A viscountcy is flirting with escheat just across the property line, and you are worried about vegetables.”
    “Hadrian and Harold are both quite young enough to have large families yet. I hardly think ruin lurks around the corner.”
    The words were out of her mouth before Avis realized how they’d sound, and then they hung in the air, putting that awful, pitying look on Lily’s pretty face.
    “Ruin seldom announces its intent to call,” Lily said quietly. “Much less its desire to become our nearest neighbor.”
    “Potatoes,” Avis said. “Baked with our own cheddar and the earliest chives we can find.”
    Lily rose, rather than finish the sermon she was doubtless dying to deliver. “That sounds delicious. You’ll bring those back to Cook?”
    “When I’m done with them, and you will join us for luncheon on Sunday, Lily Prentiss. I won’t be left to manage two hungry fellows on my own, much less three.”
    “Three?”
    “Fen usually joins me on Sunday.” Which Lily knew very well. “I do so enjoy tormenting him over his manners.”
    “Avis, have you considered that just possibly—”
    Avis rose as well, abruptly tired to her bones with old arguments and old lectures that always rang loudly with “for your own good.”
    “Fen is my steward, and he’s the next thing to family, and of course I will confer with him from time to time.”
    “But at table? He’s too flirtatious by half, which only fuels the worst gossip.”
    “My own staff knows better than to gossip, or they had better.