“I never cared about my origins as much as you and Mick.” He finished off his pint, slammed it on the table. “I’m going to order another. Care to join me?”

Aiden glanced around. “No, I have something I need to do.”

“Say hello to her for me.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You’re bloody irritating, you know that?”

Finn had the audacity to grin. “That’s what brothers are for.”

Lady Elverton sat on the edge of the bed and tenderly skimmed her fingers along her husband’s cheek, remembering how she had once loved him enough to disobey her father, to dishonor her family. How she’d allowed him to take her first three sons from her. He’d never had much patience with children, and she suspected if he hadn’t needed an heir, he might have been content with his first wife, barren though she’d been. “Blink once for yes.”

He blinked.

“Twice for no.”

Blink. Blink.

“Do you know who I am?”

Blink.

She cradled the jaw she had once peppered in kisses—when she was younger, more svelte, when he found her attractive. Before he’d begun bringing other women, other mistresses, into his bed within this chamber, knowing she could hear them through the wall, screaming out his name. He required that benediction. His name on their tongue at the moment of their release. She’d granted him the same favor a thousand times, even when the ultimate pleasure had eluded her. “The three bastards I placed in your arms, the ones you would not allow me to keep, they were your blood. You do know that, don’t you?”

Blink.

Leaning down, she placed a kiss on his forehead, one on his temple, the last near the shell of his ear. “The heir I gave you . . . was not.”

It was a lie, of course, but it would torment him, occupy his thoughts as he lay there with an active mind but an inactive body. With a self-satisfied smile, she rose from the bed and looked down on him.

Blink. Blink. Blink.

A strangling, gurgling sound in his throat.

“Careful now, darling,” she warned calmly. “You don’t want to have another apoplectic fit, surely.”

Lovingly, she brought up the covers, tucked them in around him. “Now if you will be so good as to excuse my rudeness, I must leave you as my lover awaits.”

Then ignoring his warbling of distress, she strolled from the room, her head held high, feeling her strength returning in full force. In her bedchamber, she took Sense and Sensibility from her night table, curled up in a chair, and turned to the page marked with a blue ribbon. Over the years, she’d had dozens of lovers, all found within the pages of novels. Her favorite was Colonel Brandon, and it was he who would keep her company this night.