“But other people do think so.”

“Well, that’s the effect of happiness for you. She’s satisfied with her choices, so other people think they must be good choices. Then they imitate her.” He lowered his voice, confidential. “She likes that too. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but she’s fond of her own way. Rather enjoys being a leader in the ton.”

“That has dawned on me once or twice,” Henry replied drily.

Jem nodded. “That’s the best I can figure. There’s no other reason for so many females to start wearing yellow gowns, for one thing. Em loves the color, but it turns most other women into sick canaries.”

Henry smiled at the description, but Jem needed no reply. He was warming to his subject now. “Just think of who makes you happy, Hal. That’s probably the woman you ought to spend your life with. If you don’t know that much, then you aren’t ready to marry.”

He leaned forward across the desk, his voice confidential. “Em would clout me for saying that. I know she wants to see you settled. If she ever gives you any trouble, though, you may just remind her that she waited almost an entire season before deciding on me.”

Henry’s thoughts were stumbling, falling behind Jem’s words. “She did not always care for you, then.”

He had been away at school when his brother married. He had always assumed Jem’s courtship had gone smoothly because everything always went smoothly for Jem. His suit could never have involved the pain of veiled taunts or letters painfully printed out with an awkward hand. It would not have driven him to the guilty comfort of another woman’s embrace.

“Not at first, she didn’t want me,” Jem said with a grin. He tipped his chair back on two legs, balancing himself by resting his hands on his desk. “I trod on her toes the first time we danced. I couldn’t think of the steps while I was looking at her; she was that amazing. But that wasn’t much fun for her, getting trampled, and she didn’t want to dance with me again. I wore her down over time, though. I knew she was the one for me.”

“You knew Emily was the right choice because she was happy.”

“Yes.” Jem let the front legs of his chair thump onto the floor again. “And I think that’s why I felt happy around her too. I think everyone does. Don’t you?”

Oh, certainly. That is, when she’s not scheming to marry me off or turn me into a spectacle in front of the entire ton.

But Henry understood what his brother meant. Emily was happy. And because she loved Henry, she wanted him to find happiness too. She and Jem both wanted that, even if they did not know how to help him attain it.

How simple Jem made the whole situation sound when he reduced it to his essentials. Think of who makes you happy. But the who might not be the same as what. No woman on earth could bring back the use of Henry’s arm or erase the pain of Quatre Bras.

What was left of happiness, then? He didn’t know, but whether as an artist or a soldier, a lover or husband, he’d always planned to grasp for happiness with two hands.

He couldn’t do that now. So he had to come up with a new plan.

“Did any of that help you?” Jem asked. His expression was eager.

“I’m not certain,” Henry said.

But the seed of an idea was taking root. A strategy at last.

He just had one more letter to write.

Twelve

“I thought you’d stopped getting those ridiculous letters.” Caroline handed a fat sealed note to Frances before draping herself onto her morning room’s scroll-armed sofa.

Frances shoved the note halfway under her dark blue skirts, then took up her embroidery again. “I’d stopped sending them for a few weeks, so I thought I would stop getting them. Or you would, actually.”

Her needle whipped quickly through Caroline’s delicate lawn handkerchief, creating a monogram. CS. Caroline, Countess of Stratton. The lady to whom the note was addressed.

She shouldn’t have sent that quick little note of apology following the ball. It was an atonement for mauling Henry in the Blue Room, even after she knew how much he wanted letters from Caroline.

But if he was sending letters again, then she hadn’t really atoned for anything. She’d just compounded her sin.

The needle flashed faster. Its tip caught the edge of Frances’s thimble, flicking it with a delicate ping across the morning room.

“I should never have allowed you to take my name in vain, but I thought the blasphemy would be short-lived. I never imagined your scheme would go on this long.” Caroline stretched back on the green upholstery, chosen to match the shade of her eyes, and picked up the newest issue of Lady’s Magazine. “Do you think a Pomona green gown would look well on me?”

Frances tossed aside the handkerchief again and dropped to the floor, squinting across the vine-patterned carpet for her lost thimble. “Yes, it would look lovely on you. And you know I meant to put a stop to the letters once it was clear to me that Henry was getting fascinated with you.”

“Now there we differ, because that’s not clear to me at all.” Caroline snapped her periodical closed and dropped it on the floor, then hoisted herself up on one elbow. “Why are you scrabbling about on the floor? Are we playing charades?”

“Yes,” Frances said. “I am playing a deranged fool. Could you not guess?” With a wrench of her arm, she laid hold of the thimble under a small writing desk. She then crawled over to retrieve Caroline’s magazine, shook out the pages, closed it, and sat up.

Caroline peered down at her from the sofa. “It was a more than fair imitation, but I do not understand why the urge seized you.”

“I lost my thimble,” Frances said. “It was a perfectly normal reaction.”

“And you got a letter from Henry,” Caroline reminded her in a singsong voice.

“No, you got a letter.”

“No.” Caroline shook her head. “It’s your letter, Frannie. They’ve all been for you, no matter the name on them. Whatever you’ve written is what he’s become fascinated with. You ought simply to tell him the truth, then do the kind of thing to him that makes a man forget all about being angry.”

The kind of thing they’d done last night… hard-muscled thighs, a firm mouth moving hot over her skin, hands stroking and groping in a twilight-dark room. Frances could have moaned at the memory.

“Your cheeks are turning pink.”

Frances frowned and covered them with her hands. “So? It’s hot today.”

“Fine, lie to me.” Caroline reached down an arm and patted around on the floor until she found her Lady’s Magazine. “I’ll just read about Pomona green and wait for the callers to start coming. We’ll just have an ordinary day. We’ll get far too many roses and we’ll feed the blooms to the carriage horses. I wish for nothing else in the world.”

“Nor do I.”

Caroline rolled her magazine into a tube and batted Frances on the head. “Lies, lies, and more lies. I count on your advice, you know. If you’re only going to tell me what you think I want to hear, I won’t want to hear it anymore.”

Frances rubbed at the top of her head and scooted on the floor out of Caroline’s reach. “Right now I’m thinking of something you won’t want to hear.”

“Likewise.” Her cousin waggled the rolled-up magazine. “Tell. Henry. You. Wrote. The. Letters.”

Frances stood and brushed off her skirts. “So we’re back to that? Listen to me, Caroline. I’m not going to tell him.”

She sighed and sank back into her chair, not caring that she rumpled her embroidery. “I can’t tell him. Not after seeing how delighted he was to receive a letter he thought was from you. He said…” She made herself smile. “He said he’d been thinking about leaving London, but your letter convinced him to stay.”

Caroline’s mouth went slack. “What in God’s name did you put in that letter? It must have been some sort of magical incantation.”

“I don’t recall, exactly. Just something that let him know I enjoyed his company.” She gave a mirthless laugh. “But he didn’t enjoy mine, did he? I signed it as ‘a friend,’ and he decided that meant you because your friendship was the one he wanted. He might have welcomed my words, but they held no power until he linked them with your name.”

Caroline had shoved herself upright on the sofa. Under her crown of golden hair, her ocean-green eyes were huge and bright, and her mouth sagged.

“Don’t make your lost-kitten face at me.” Frances covered her eyes. “That’s not fair. I’m not even going to look at you until you stop.”

“Oh, fine.” Caroline’s voice sounded normal, but when Frances lifted her face, the countess still looked a little distressed. “I know you don’t like that expression, but the feeling’s real enough. I absolutely hate that you think you aren’t everything he wants. And I hate him a little bit for making you feel that way.”

“Don’t hate him,” Frances said. “It’s not his fault. This muddle is my doing. I wrote more letters knowing he thought they were from you.”

“How silly of him. I suppose that’s proof of male arrogance, because I’ve tried to give him no encouragement. Not since the first time I met him, and certainly not since you sent him a letter. If he had eyes in his head, he’d see that readily enough.”

It was silly of Henry, maybe. But it didn’t take much for a man to become fascinated with Caroline. Her ever-full drawing room was testament to that.

“Maybe he just thinks you’re being devious,” Frances suggested.