QUOTE : If the weather does remain fair, I would like to take Winnie with me into town soon.” Emmie nodded but pulled her feet up under her, making herself look smaller and even a little defensive. “Miss Farnum, nobody will treat her badly in my company.” “They would not dare,” she agreed, but her tone was off. A little flippant or bitter. “But?” He sipped his drink and tried not to focus on the way candlelight glinted off her hair, which was swept back into a soft, disheveled bun at her nape. “Winnie will parade around town with you,” she said, an edge to her voice, “and have a grand time as long as you are at her side. Emboldened by your escort and her happy experiences, she will wander there again on her own, and sooner or later, somebody will treat her like the pariah she is.” “Go on.” He was a bastard, but he hadn’t considered this. “I wonder, when I watch you and Lord Amery cosseting and fussing over Winnie, if I don’t do her a disservice by allowing such attentions. She is desperate for your regard and affection, your time, and yet she cannot grow to depend on it. Still, her instincts are right: She is deserving of just such care, and had her father been a decent man, she would have had at least some of that from him.” “But?” The earl watched the emotions play across the lady’s face and saw there was much she wasn’t saying. “But she cannot grow to rely on such from others,” Emmie said, setting her drink down with a definite clink. “Sooner or later, you will return to London or take a wife, and Winnie will be sent off, to school, to a poor relation, to somewhere. Her future is not that of the legitimate daughter of an earl, and she must learn to rely on herself.” “As you have?” He watched as she rose and started pacing the room. She crossed her arms and hunched her shoulders, her expression troubled. “Of course as I have.” She nodded then startled as thunder rumbled even closer. “Winnie deserves the hugs and cuddles and compliments and guidance you give her, but what she deserves and what life will hand her are two different things. She needs to know not every friendly gentleman who offers her a buss on the cheek can be trusted to respect her.” The