“I haven’t the foggiest notion what you mean.” Margot snatched her gaze away from Drake and focused it instead on Zurie, who made a happy noise and then lunged for her. They were making their way to the exit by means of a side aisle, and the going was rather slow.

She caught her niece, dropped a kiss upon her curls, and waited to see if being preoccupied with thoughts of a man made any urges for a little one of her own spring to life. But she found, as always, that her love for Zurie in particular didn’t seem to extend to the thought of babies in general. Was there something the matter with her?

Each thought a bejeweled raindrop.

Hardly, just now. More like a rain puddle, cloudy and grey.

Willa chuckled and looked over at where Drake was moving toward the narthex with his friend. “Right. No notion at all, I’m sure. You do know he asked Lukas’s permission to court you, don’t you?”

“What?” Her gaze snapped back to Willa from where it had strayed to him again. Something buzzed in her veins, and she wasn’t quite sure if it was anger or pleasure. “When was this?”

“Oh, at your birthday dinner.” Willa lifted her brows and adjusted Zurie’s little ruffled bonnet. “Hasn’t he followed up on it? I thought perhaps with all the dinners you’d been eating over there . . .”

“No. I mean, he’s attentive, but he’s attentive to everyone. His sister and Holmes as well as me.” The only thing different in his treatment was the way his eyes lingered. And the letters.

He looked up now and caught her gaze—which had again gone his way, blast it all. Smiled.

Bother. Drat. Blast. Why did he do this to her? It wasn’t that she looked at him and went all weak-kneed over his knotted nose or his silver-blue eyes, the way the secretaries said happened when they saw a handsome man. Not that he was unpleasant to look at, but what were good looks, really? Just inherited features from parents, arranged symmetrically.

He praised her beauty in those letters. But no more often than he praised her mind. Her heart.

Was this really how Drake Elton courted a girl?

Half of her mouth returned his smile before she could help it. Which made her all the more frustrated when she turned back to hiss a quiet reply to Willa. “I’m not going to fall in love, so stop smirking at me like that. He’s a friend. That’s all.”