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say that you stable your horses at Doddsworth’s place?”
    “Yes, in exchange for trying to teach his two younger sons their manners. A useless effort, it appears, but Squire is kind enough to pretend that it is an equal trade.”
    Despite her refined accent and her grand-lady hauteur, Mrs. Cole was a poor choice to give lessons in deportment, Forde thought, not offering a half-drowned, frozen fellow a cup of tea. And no man, in his experience, was simply kind to a comely female. From what he could see under the billowing, bedraggled cape, Mrs. Cole’s shape was more than pleasing, and her face would be more than attractive if she managed a smile. Her green eyes were her best feature, sparkling with intelligence. No, no man did favors for a winsome widow without expecting some better return.
    “Surely teaching boys proper behavior is Mrs. Squire Doddsworth’s job.”
    “She died some five years ago.”
    Ah, now Forde understood Squire’s “kindness.” Instead of offering baubles, bracelets, or brooches, he bought Mrs. Cole’s affections with stalls and straw. Damn, this was no connection Forde wanted his nephew to make. His decision was made. The wedding would not take place this month, or ever, if he had his way. “I shall take my leave, then, since you are so busy, Mrs. Cole, but I shall return tomorrow for our talk. You can count on that.”
    He mounted Smoky, bowed his head in farewell, and rode off into a slanting, icy rain. He wondered if the horse could keep his footing on the way back to the inn. He wondered what Mrs. Cole was hiding, that she was so desperate to see him gone and away from her house. Most of all he wondered how, when the rain was merely driving the dirt deeper into his clothing, it was rinsing that confounded white wedding gown clean?

Chapter Four
    T he chances of Susannah’s wedding gown coming clean were as good as the chances of a god falling from the sky into Katie Cole’s chicken yard. Yet that was precisely what had happened, or as near as made no difference in her mind.
    Even filthy and foul-tempered, Viscount Forde had to be the most handsome man Katie had seen in decades, certainly one who wore his middle age well. His wavy black hair had no gray in it, and his complexion had no red-veined, raddled splotches. His physique would have been the envy of a man half his years, as would his strength and his agility, as the viscount leaped into the saddle without a mounting block. And his smile . . . ah, his smile could warm the coldest day and melt the hardest heart, even one that had stopped feeling almost twenty years ago.
    Katie chided herself. She was a widow of a certain age, with a grown daughter and a respectable standing in her neighborhood. She had no business being moonstruck by a chance-met stranger, and no business noticing his broad shoulders, his muscular thighs in the tightly fitting breeches he wore, or his trim derriere. Heavens, a lady did not acknowledge that a gentleman had that part of anatomy, much less appreciate it! And she was far better off burying those wayward, wanton thoughts, because Tanyon Wellforde, Viscount Forde, meant her no good.
    Katie had caught his glance of assessment, all right, although his lordship was more subtle than the oafs she often encountered at the local assemblies, or travelers passing through the village. She supposed in London the viscount might have taken out his quizzing glass to make the inspection, like others of his elite kind. Here his dark eyes had briefly traveled up and down her worn cloak and scuffed boots and unwinding braids at the back of her neck, with a pause for the bodice of her gown where the cloak fell open.
    She had seen enough such calculating looks on enough men’s faces to recognize being measured for his bed. His lordship had made it plain that Mrs. Katherine Cole was good for nothing else.
    He did not approve of her tidy house, her thriving garden, or her profitable chickens, and he did not approve of his