“I’ll take that as a yes.” She helped herself to a neat little bite and quietly chewed and then swallowed, and for a moment, he expected she’d at last relented.

His relief proved short-lived.

“Weren’t you at one time very close with the lady’s brother?” Eloise asked with all the innocence befitting her age and the lack of knowledge she had of what had transpired between him and Lord Rhys Brookfield.

“Let it be,” he said between clenched teeth.

Footfalls echoed in the hall, and he was grateful when his mother appeared a moment later.

Newspaper in hand, she joined him and Eloise at the breakfast table. “My two favorite people,” she greeted warmly.

“I can certainly understand one of us being your favorite, but not the frowning one,” Eloise whispered.

Their mother smiled. “Will you allow your brother and me a moment alone?”

“Of course. He’s ever so maudlin. Even more so than usual,” his sister teased.

He didn’t even bother attempting a return grin.

After she’d gone and a footman had drawn the door shut behind her, his mother turned to him. “She’s not wrong, you know. You are.”

“I am what?” he asked curtly, sipping his coffee.

“Maudlin, and more so than usual.”

“Is that what you wished to speak to me about? My ill temper?”

“No.” His mother paused. “The papers contain mention of the Brookfield girl. Lettie.”

“Do they?” he asked carefully.

Apparently, the world had gathered about his relationship with Lettie, and there could be nothing worse than this news. They’d only make something tawdry of the time he’d spent with her, when there’d been nothing tawdry about it. It had been the most joyous time he’d known in all his thirty-four years. But the gossips would turn it into something ugly and scandalous. He gripped the handle of his cup hard enough to snap it, then he loosened his grip.

“There are questions as to why Lord Exmoor has dragged his heels as long as he has.”

That was what the papers were writing about Lettie? Not about the time she’d spent with Anthony, but about the lady’s relationship with Exmoor? Why did that not make him feel any better?

“Because he’s an ass,” he muttered. “Because surely they aren’t speaking poorly about Lady Lettie.”

“Will you excuse us?” the duchess said, and the four footmen immediately saw themselves out.

The moment they’d gone, she turned to Anthony. “You love her.”

Was there anyone in his life who did not know?

“Of course I know,” his mother drawled. “I had hoped when I left you alone with Lettie that day, you might foster some regard for the lady.”

He started.

“I knew the moment she came to call that she was perfect. It was your sister, however, who mentioned she saw you at Hyde Park with her one morning.”

His jaw slipped. “Eloise followed me?”