But the conversation kept returning to the baby.
“It cannot just have your name,” Ansella said. “We must think of another so that he has two to make him seem important.”
The Earl then suggested ridiculous names, some of them Indian, which made her laugh.
Then dinner was finished and they walked into the drawing room.
The room now looked very different from when he had first returned. Cosnat, to please Ansella, had produced every flower he could and they were in large vases.
The honeysuckle and the first roses that had come into bloom scented the air.
The Earl now knew that, incredible though it might seem, he had found someone to take his mother’s place.
Ansella would fill it just as efficiently, charmingly and lovingly as she had.
‘But she has to love me,’ his heart told him over
