"As much as anyone can be expected to stomach," she said with a smile just as bright as Henrietta's. "My sister sets an excellent table."

Lady Henrietta gave Mary a slightly wary look. "Well, you should really try the braised duck. It's excellent." Turning to Amy Selwick, she asked, "Will you and Richard go to Scotland for the shooting?"

Lord Richard's wife shook her head, setting her short dark curls bouncing. "No, we're straight back to Sussex. We plan — " Glancing at Mary, she abruptly broke off. "Um, that is, we have obligations that keep us close to home."

Increasing, thought Mary. How dull.

"You and Miles will come visit, won't you?" Amy said eagerly, confirming Mary's diagnosis. "Before Christmas? It would be such a help to us. Jane will be visiting, too."

"You know we would like to," said Lady Henrietta, with a pointed glance over her shoulder, to where their respective husbands propped up opposite ends of the mantelpiece, conspicuously ignoring each other. At least, Lord Richard was conspicuously ignoring Mr. Dorrington. Mr. Dorrington looked a bit like a dog hoping to wiggle his way back after having been booted off the hearth rug. Mary did vaguely recall hearing something about a falling out between the two men, something to do with Lady Henrietta's marriage, but with Geoffrey's defection following only a day behind, the domestic dramas of the Selwick clan had been the least of her concerns.

Amy made a face. "Don't worry. Richard is coming round. Slowly, but…" She shrugged in a way that proclaimed her French ancestry.

"But aren't they always," Henrietta finished for her, with a grin. It was clearly an old and well-established conversation. Whatever the rift between their menfolk, Lord Richard's wife and younger sister were clearly on excellent terms. "Slow, that is. At least they are speaking now, even if it is mostly in grunts."

"Someone ought to prepare a dictionary," chimed in Letty, settling herself on the settee next to Lady Henrietta. Mary had known they were friends — the less popular girls did tend to band together — but she had never realized they were quite that cozy with one another. "It would vastly improve communications between the sexes."

"Your disadvantage was in never having older brothers," said Lady Henrietta smugly. "It does wonders for one's fluency."

"I do have one," protested Amy. "What about Edouard?"

"But he's French," countered Henrietta, who had met him. "They can't be trusted to make the right sorts of inarticulate noises."

"The French are scarcely articulate at the best of times," put in Mary, just to have something to say.

Instead of tittering the way they were supposed to, the other three women just looked at her, as though they had forgotten she was there and were less than pleased to have been reminded.

"I believe I'll have some more of that duck," said Henrietta, rising with more energy than grace from her perch on the settee. "Letty?"

"I shouldn't." Mary's sister glanced ruefully down at her waist.

"But you will," concluded Lady Henrietta cheerfully, threading her arm through Letty's.

"You," protested Letty laughingly, "are an evil influence."

"I know," said Lady Henrietta complacently. "It's one of my more loveable attributes. Oh, look, there's Penelope with Miss Gwen! I wonder what mischief she's been getting into now?"

"Penelope or Miss Gwen?" demanded Amy, a dimple showing in one cheek.

"Either," replied Lady Henrietta with relish.

Laughing, the group swept on ahead, leaving Mary standing like so much detritus in its wake.

Only Letty hung back. She tilted her head up at Mary with what Mary privately thought of as her country housewife expression, a militant gleam that presaged someone being washed, fed, or otherwise ordered about. "You are going to come eat, aren't you? You didn't have a thing at dinner."

"I ate a whole jugged hare." Perhaps it hadn't been an entire jugged hare, but it had certainly been the better part of one. Including an ear Mary was quite sure wasn't supposed to have been there.

Mary could tell Letty didn't believe her. "Would you like some tea? Or coffee? Perhaps a lemonade? We still have some lemons left in the orangery — "

"No. Thank you." Mary cut her off before that hideous we could grow and spawn, birthing a litter of ours. "I believe I can contrive to carry on without a beverage."

Letty refused to be balked. "Are you comfortable? Are you quite sure you have everything you need?"

Except a husband, preferably titled. Mary managed a brittle smile. "Really, Letty, you needn't fuss. I'm quite as comfortable as I can be."

The words "under the circumstances" didn't need to be voiced. They seeped out like smoke, poisoning the air and scorching a deep furrow between Letty's brows. Guilt charred across every inch of her guileless face. Even her freckles looked guilty.

Mary bit back a wordless noise of annoyance. Why did Letty always have to be so earnest about everything? She was welcome to her dreary viscount, if only she would stop looking at her with that hangdog expression, the one that positively panted for expiation. What did Letty expect her to say? No, darling, I don't mind in the least that you've quite ruined my prospects. I always wanted to be made a laughingstock in front of the ton. It only made it worse that Letty hadn't done any of it on purpose. Outright malice would have been easier to bear than blundering virtue.

"What about a biscuit? We have some lovely gingery ones…."

Mary just looked at her.

Letty sighed. "Perhaps, later, we might speak privately?"

Mary's expression didn't change. "Perhaps."

"I have some good news for you."

"I shall look forward to it."

There was nothing Letty could say to that, so she simply furrowed her brow at Mary one last time — her concerned expression, as opposed to her feeding or washing expression — and went off after her friends in pursuit of refreshments. From the supper table, Mary heard the flurry of chatter abruptly peak in volume as Letty rejoined her friends. Like a flock of geese squawking, she thought unpleasantly.

Vaughn still hadn't returned.

He couldn't still be in the gallery, could he? Mary's eyes narrowed as she glanced at the narrow sliver of floor revealed by the half-open door. She couldn't blame him for wanting to avoid the rest of the house party — but where was he? Without his saturnine presence, the gathering felt oddly flat.

"Darling!"

The same could not be said for the maternal bosom, which was currently swollen with unabashed glee and an entire carafe of ratafia. Mary fought her way free of her mother's embrace.

"Isn't this above all things splendid?" gushed Mrs. Alsworthy. "Oh, your darling, darling sister."

So, noted Mary dispassionately, Letty had risen to two darlings. Bring out the Pinchingdale diamonds and she might attain the giddy heights of three endearments at a time. In the space of one wedding ceremony, Letty had gone from disappointment to favorite daughter. As for Mary, she had been demoted down into the depths of parental purgatory. Not hell, since she still had a chance to redeem herself by an advantageous match, but she had quite definitely been booted out of paradise pending further developments.

"Such a house!" Mrs. Alsworthy exclaimed, her cheeks pink with pride and wine. "Have you ever seen anything like it?"

"It is certainly something out of the ordinary." Unless, of course, one happened to live between the covers of a novel by Monk Lewis or Mrs. Radcliffe.

"And the park! I've never seen anything so grand. Why, I'm sure you could fit half of London into it!" Mrs. Alsworthy beamed gleefully about her. "Your sister has done very well for herself, very well, indeed."

"Hasn't she," murmured Mary.

"I do wish we could have found as comfortable a settlement for you," fretted Mrs. Alsworthy, conveniently forgetting that Lord Pinchingdale had originally been intended for her older daughter. "I don't understand it. Three Seasons! One would have thought you would have caught someone by now." Mrs. Alsworthy preened, one ringed hand rising to pat her green silk turban. "I secured your father without even one Season."

"At the Littleton Assemblies," Mary supplied, having heard the story more times than the Prince of Wales had consumed hot dinners. "I know."

"I was wearing my blue brocade, with my hair all piled on top of my head — that was the fashion then, you know, and very becoming it was to me, too — and the sweetest little stomacher all embroidered with purple pansies, and your father was smitten, smitten on the spot."

People who waxed rapturous about love matches clearly had never been privy to the aftermath of one. Her parents' great love had lasted all of a year; the marriage itself had been limping along for three decades.

"Of course," Mrs. Alsworthy was still rattling on, "I was never so tall as you, and we all know that men don't like tall girls. It makes them feel small. You really must get in the trick of looking up at them, like so."

Mrs. Alsworthy hunched her shoulders, stuck out her neck, and attempted to look dewy-eyed.

Mary wasn't quite sure how impersonating a myopic turtle was supposed to help her secure a husband, but it was easier not to argue. "Yes, Mama."

Mrs. Alsworthy squinted thoughtfully at her. "And perhaps a bit more trim on the bodice…Gentlemen do so appreciate a nicely trimmed décolletage."

"I don't think it's the trim, Mama," said Mary.

As she had known she would, her mother ignored her and carried on with her own train of thought as the ribbons on her own exuberantly trimmed bodice trembled in sympathy. "So fortunate that Letty has offered to fund another Season for you — but this will have to be the last, you know. To have five Seasons looks like desperation."