He found Moira in the kitchen garden, pulling onions. She was talking to Amaranthus, who had evidently been gathering as well; she carried a trug that held a large mound of grapes and a couple of pears from the small tree that grew near the cookhouse. With an eye for the fruit, he strode up and bade the women good morning. Amaranthus gave him an up-and-down glance, inhaled as though trying to judge his state of intoxication from his aroma, and with a faint shake of the head handed him a pear.
“Coffee?” he said hopefully to Moira.
“Well, I’ll not be saying there isn’t,” she said dubiously. “It’s left from yesterday, though, and strong enough to take the shine off your teeth.”
“Perfect,” he assured her, and bit into the pear, closing his eyes as the luscious juice flooded his mouth. He opened them to find Amaranthus, back turned to him, stooping to look at something on the ground among the radishes. She was wearing a thin wrapper over her shift, and the fabric stretched neatly over her very round bottom.
She stood up suddenly, turning round, and he at once bent toward the ground she’d been looking at, saying, “What is that?” though he personally saw nothing but dirt and a lot of radish tops.
“It’s a dung beetle,” she said, looking at him closely. “Very good for the soil. They roll up small balls of ordure and trundle them away.”
“What do they do with them? The, um, balls of ordure, I mean.”
“Eat them,” she said, with a slight shrug. “They bury the balls for safekeeping, and then eat them as need requires—or sometimes they breed inside the larger ones.”
“How … cozy. Have you had any breakfast?” William asked, raising one brow.
“No, it isn’t ready yet.”
“Neither have I,” he said, getting to his feet. “Though I’m not quite as hungry as I was before you told me that.” He glanced down at his waistcoat. “Have I any dung beetles in this noble assemblage?”
That made her laugh.
“No, you haven’t,” she said. “Not nearly colorful enough.”
Amaranthus was suddenly standing quite close to him, though he was sure he hadn’t seen her move. She had the odd trick of seeming to appear suddenly out of thin air; it was disconcerting, but rather intriguing.
“That bright-green one,” she said, pointing a long, delicate finger at his middle, “is a Dogbane Leaf Beetle, Chrysosuchus auratus.”
“Is it, really?”
“Yes, and this lovely creature with the long nose is a billbug.”
“A pillbug?” William squinted down his chest.
“No, a billbug,” she said, tapping the bug in question. “It’s a sort of weevil, but it eats cattails. And young corn.”
“Rather a varied diet.”
“Well, unless you’re a dung beetle, you do have some choice in what you eat,” she said, smiling. She touched another of the beetles, and William felt a faint but noticeable jolt at the base of his spine. “Now here,” she said, with small, distinct taps of her finger, “we have Ash Borer, a Festive Tiger Beetle, and the False Potato Beetle.”
“What does a true potato beetle look like?”
“Very much the same. This one’s called a False Potato Beetle because while it will eat potatoes in a pinch, it really prefers horse nettles.”
“Ah.” He thought he should express interest in the rest of the little red-eyed things ornamenting his waistcoat, partially to repay her kindness in embroidering them but more in hopes that she’d go on tapping them. He was opening his mouth to inquire about a large cream-colored thing with horns when she stepped back in order to look up into his face.
“I heard my father-in-law talking to Lord John about you,” she said.
“Oh? Good. I hope they’d a fine day for it,” he said, not really caring.
“Speaking of False Potato Beetles, I mean,” she said. He closed his eyes briefly, then opened one and looked at her. She was perfectly solid, not wavering in the slightest.
“I know I’m a trifle the worse for drink,” he said politely. “But I don’t think I resemble any sort of potato beetle, regardless of my uncle’s opinion.”
She laughed, showing very white teeth. Maybe she didn’t drink coffee …
“No, you don’t,” she assured him. “The dichotomy just reminded me of what Father Pardloe was saying—that you wanted to renounce your title, but couldn’t.”
He felt suddenly almost sober.
“Really. Did you happen to overhear the reason?”
“No,” she said. “And it’s not my business, is it?”
“Evidently you think it is,” he said. “Or why are you mentioning it?”
She bent and plucked a small bunch of grapes out of the trug, offering it to him. Moira, he noticed, had gone about her business.
“Well, I thought that if that’s truly the case … I might be able to suggest something.”
With an odd sense of exhilaration, he took the grapes and asked, “Such as?”
“Well,” she said, as reasonably as though she were describing the eating habits of a firefly, “it’s quite simple. You can’t renounce your title, but you could hand it on. Abdicate in favor of your heir, I mean.”
“I haven’t an heir. Are you suggesting—”
“Yes, exactly.” She nodded approvingly at him. “You marry me and as soon as I have a son, you can give him your title, and either retire into private life and breed dachshunds or perhaps pretend to commit suicide and go off to become anyone you like.”
“Leaving you—”
“Leaving me as the dowager countess of whatever your estate is called, I forget. That might be slightly better than being the Duke of Pardloe’s penurious daughter-in-law, mightn’t it?”
He took a deep breath. Coffee was indeed on the wind, and so was bacon, but he’d suddenly lost interest in food. He stared at her. She cocked one smooth blond eyebrow.
“And what if your next child is a daughter?” he said, to his own surprise. “And the one after that? It seems to me that I should be in substantial danger of ending with a—a—hareem of girls, all in need of dowries and marriages, and myself still a bloody earl.”
Her brow wrinkled slightly.
“What’s a hareem?”
“It’s what Arab sheiks do to leaven the monotony of marriage, or so I’m told. Polygamy, I mean.”
“Surely you don’t mean to imply that you think being married to me would be boring, William.” The shadow of a dimple flickered in her cheek. “But as for hareems, nonsense. You needn’t marry me straight off, you know. We’d give it a go, and if the result is male, then you marry me, acknowledge the child, and—” She gave a flick of her hand in a silent “voilà.”
“I don’t believe I am having this conversation,” he said, shaking his head violently. “I really don’t. But for the sake of argument, just what the devil do you propose doing if the result, as you so casually put it, is female?”
She pursed her lips and turned her head to one side, considering.
“Oh, I can think of a dozen things at least. The simplest would be for me to go abroad at the first suggestion of pregnancy—I should do that in any case, as we wouldn’t be married yet—and pretend to be a wealthy widow. Then—”