“Still.” He speared a piece of Mrs. Fogg’s famous roast beef. “I have precisely zero first cousins.”

“Truly?” She looked shocked.

“My mother’s older sister was widowed quite young. She had no children and no wish to remarry.”

“And your father?”

“He had two siblings, but they died without issue.”

“I’m so sorry.”

He paused, his fork halfway to his mouth. “Why?”

“Well, because—” She stopped, her chin drawing back as she pondered her answer. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “I cannot imagine being so alone.”

For some reason he found this amusing. “I do have two sisters.”

“Of course, but—” Again, she cut herself off.

“But what?” He smiled to show her he was not offended.

“It’s just so . . . few of you.”

“I can assure you it did not feel that way when I was growing up.”

“No, I imagine not.”

Richard helped himself to two more of Mrs. Fogg’s Yorkshire puddings. “Your home was a hive of activity, I imagine.”

“Closer to a madhouse.”

He laughed.

“I’m not jesting,” she said. But she grinned.

“I hope you will find my two sisters an adequate substitute for yours.”

She smiled and cocked her head flirtatiously to the side. “With a name like Fleur, it was predestined, don’t you think?”

“Ah yes, the florals.”

“Is that what they call us now?”

“Now?”

She rolled her eyes. “The Smythe-Smith bouquet, the garden girls, the hothouse flowers . . .”

“The hothouse flowers?”

“My mother was not amused.”

“No, I don’t imagine she was.”

“It was not always ‘flowers,’” she said with a bit of a wince. “I’m told that some gentlemen were fond of alliteration.”

“Gentlemen?” Richard echoed doubtfully. He could come up with all sorts of things that began with H, and none of them were complimentary.

Iris speared a tiny potato with her fork. “I use the term loosely.”

He watched her for a moment. At first glance, his new wife seemed wispy, almost insubstantial. She was not tall, only up to his shoulder, and rather thin. (Although not, he had discovered recently, without curves.) And then, of course, there was her remarkable coloring. But her eyes, which on first glance had seemed pale and insipid, sharpened and glowed with intelligence when she was engaged in conversation. And when she moved it became clear that her slender frame was not one of weakness and malaise but rather of strength and determination.

Iris Smythe-Smith did not glide through rooms as so many of her peers had been trained to do; when she walked, it was with direction and purpose.

And her name, he reminded himself, was not Smythe-Smith. She was Iris Kenworthy, and he was coming to realize that he had barely scratched the surface of knowing her.

Chapter Ten

Three days later

THEY WERE GETTING CLOSE.