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told you how incorrigible you truly are?”
    “That's your question,” Aaron said, chuckling. “Seems like a wasted question to me.”
    Daphne frowned. “You know as well as I do that wasn't my question.”
    “It's the one you asked.” Aaron stretched his long legs out on the front of the sleigh and took the reins from her limp grasp “So in all fairness, I'll answer it.”
    Daphne had the strangest urge to brain the man, but through some miracle, she refrained.
    “The answer is yes.” The roughness in his voice was impossible to miss. “But she didn't say it in a way that made me enjoy being called such.”
    Daphne's breath caught and a foreign tendril of heat coiled in her abdomen. “I—I see.”
    “I doubt you do.” His jaw tightened. “I was married once before,” he said on a sigh. He swallowed audibly. His eyes were fixed in front of them, offering her a side profile of his face, but that was enough to see his clenched jaw and the hard expression he wore on his face. “She used to say that about me.” He found Daphne's hand and brought it up to his mouth where he placed a gentle kiss on her wrist, then lowered their hands.  “But it wasn't said in the same manner as when you say it.”
    Daphne bit her lip to keep from asking something that wasn't her business.
    But it was as if he knew what she wanted to ask already.
    “We were both eighteen and ran off to Scotland...” Aaron turned toward her, his eyes held a faraway look, making Daphne's gut clench. Did he still love his wife? What was the crushing sensation in her chest? She thrust away the thought. Aaron was a nice gentleman, but they'd never suit. This was only further proof—
    “I just wasn't enough for her, I suppose.” His voice was so quiet, she'd barely heard his words over the gentle snowy breeze.
    “Wasn't enough?”
    Aaron set the reins in his lap and reached one long finger up between her eyes to the spot that dratted wrinkle always formed when she was confused about something. Nodding, he said, “She preferred a country squire—”
    “Oh, I'm sorry,” Daphne rushed to say. She could feel her eyeballs bulging in her sockets; unfortunately, there was nothing she could do about it.
    “It's all right.” Aaron shot her a self-deprecating grin. “He was one of the betters on her list—which is why I mentioned him first.”
    “Betters? List?” Daphne choked.
    Aaron nodded again. “One country squire, two footmen in my father's house, three unidentified men from her brief stay in London, a fifty-five year old smithy and of course my own brother.”
    Daphne's gut clenched again, but this time in a far more painful way that sent blistering bile surging up her throat. “I'm so sorry,” she whispered. She didn't know what else to say.
    “Don't be.” Something about his dismissive tone and words seemed off, but Daphne couldn't place why.
    “May I ask what happened to her?” Daphne knew it wasn't her place to ask such a question, but she couldn't help it.
    He held her gaze. “Parliamentary divorce.”
    Now it was Daphne's turn to nod slowly. Though, or perhaps because of, born the daughter of a viscount, she and her sisters had grown up like mushrooms: always in the dark about important matters and only fed whenever necessary, which meant her knowledge of parliamentary divorces was quite slim.
    “Does this change anything?”
    Daphne blinked at him, her mind spinning. “Like what?”
    His laugh was hollow. “Do you think differently of me? Or wish for me to take you back to the house at once?”
    “Wait!” Daphne threw her hand up the way Jane always did to get her sisters to stop talking. “One question at a time.” She offered him a smile in return. “Do I think differently of you? Perhaps a little.” Noting the way his jaw was tightening again, she quickly added, “But not in a way that makes me want to demand you return me to the safety of my sister and away from your immoral clutches.”
    He laughed again, only