“If he was in a similar situation because of me,” she told the cat Maple as she lit the fire and prepared to warm up the potato soup remaining from the day before, “I shall be very pleased, very pleased indeed, for it indicates that he is interested in bedchamber sports. Heaven knows I am.”

“I am as well, despite the fact that you won’t let me read your book,” a voice said behind her.

Plum shrieked and dropped the soup ladle, clutching her heart as she spun around.

Thom was seated on the floor in a dark corner, a bowl of milk and several pieces of straw beside her. “Which is silly, when you think about it, for how am I ever to learn the joys of such activities if you won’t let me read about them?”

“You swear you won’t ever marry, so such knowledge is of no use to you. What are you doing there sitting in the corner in the dark?” Plum, having reassured herself that her heart was not going to leap out of her chest, returned to warming the soup.

“Feeding mice. Their mother was taken by one of the cats that live in the shed. I’ve found that they’ll drink milk easily enough if I use a piece of straw.” Plum gave a resigned sigh at the newest inhabitants of their little cottage, and hunted for the stale heel of bread she remembered seeing. “As for the other, I do not intend ever to marry — at least none of the gentlemen you think are so suitable. They’re nothing but idle fribbles, bent on wenching their way through their lives. But I should like to see your book nonetheless. After all, one does not have to be married to perform calisthenics, connubial or otherwise.”

Plum’s cheeks heated as she turned to glare at her niece. “No, one doesn’t, as I know well, but issues of morality aside, to do otherwise is to put yourself in a position of disadvantage. Women have little enough control over their lives, and even less power against men. Marriage at least offers some protection.”

Thom shrugged and bent over the clutch of tiny pink bodies squirming in her lap. Plum found the heel of bread, tapped it on the counter, winced at the solid thunk, then sighed and tossed it into the goat’s bucket.

“Is that why you went to meet with Mr. Harris? For protection?”

“No,” Plum answered, and bent down to look in the one small cupboard that served as their pantry. Surely there were a few greens left from last week? A bit of suet their neighbor had given them? A handful of dried beans? “I met with the gentleman — his name is Haversham, and have accepted his offer of marriage — because I wished to be married again and have a family, and he seemed a pleasant man. Wasn’t there a rind of cheese?”

Thom ducked her head, and carefully allowed milk from the tip of the straw to drip into the little pink mouth of the baby mouse.

Plum straightened up, dusting off her hands. “I see. I don’t suppose you ate it?”

Thom’s shoulder twitched.

“No, I can see you didn’t.” Plum sat on the rickety chair, thought seriously about crying, but decided that laughter was probably the only thing that would save her sanity. She allowed the — only slightly hysterical — giggles to build up inside her, her lips twitching as she asked, “Did you give the cheese to a mouse? A rat? An orphaned vole?”

Thom peeked at her from under her lashes, an affecting look Plum had never been able to master since her eyelashes, like her brows, were thick and seemed to have a mind of their own. “There was this adorable little monkey—”

“Thomasine Laurel Fraser!” Plum gasped in between unladylike snorts of laughter. “To give away your meager luncheon is bad enough, but to make up a falsehood of such magnitude is going too far.”

“It’s not a falsehood, there really was a monkey. He was with a very old man, so bent and frail he looked as if he would be blown over by a strong wind. He was very charming, however, and told me his name was Palmerston, and his monkey was named Manny. They both looked in such a poor way, I gave him a bit of cheese, and a few other things that I thought you wouldn’t mind…”

“At least you have the grace to look ashamed at such a bald-faced lie,” Plum said, her lips still twitching as she gave in and had a good long laugh. By the time she was finished and mopping up her eyes, Thom had tucked the baby mice away on an old worn cloth, and was standing next to her, watching her warily. “It’s a good thing Mr. Haversham wishes to marry quickly, else I think you’d give the cottage away.”

“I’m sorry, Aunt Plum, I know it was wrong of me, but Mr. Palmerston and Manny looked in such need of a little kindness, and he did give me something in return.”

“Oh?” Plum allowed one last giggle to express itself, then schooled her lips into a more seemly position. “What did he give you? Certainly not any coin?”

“No, he gave me some advice.”

A ripple of amusement shook her for a moment, but she kept it under control. She had a suspicion that if she gave in to it, she’d end up witless and giddy. Or rather, more witless and giddy, since she was fast approaching that state. Perhaps it was hunger that was unhinging her mind. Perhaps if she had eaten something earlier, she wouldn’t now be giggling at the thought of her niece giving away the last of their stores to a beggar who offered advice in return. “How very gracious of him. What advice did he give you?”

“Oh, it wasn’t advice for me, it was for you.”

Plum raised both brows as Thom served up two bowls of soup. “For me? Why would he offer advice for me? How did he know who I was?”

“Evidently he stopped in town.”

Thom kept her gaze on her soup, a small mercy since Plum still felt sick to her stomach whenever she thought of the townspeople cackling over her past. That the news had spread like wildfire was not surprising, but what made her furious was the way Thom was made to suffer for her ignorance and Charles’s cruelty. She didn’t mind — much — them ostracizing her, but the drubbing Thom had taken the last few days was untenable. Her conscience rubbing her raw, she fought the desire to immediately pen a note to her intended, informing him of her history and breaking their betrothal. “What’s done is done. I will tell him the truth after we’re married. It’s a matter of self-preservation, not selfishness. I simply have no other choice, and it’s not as if he will be losing out — I will be a devoted wife and mother.”

“Of course you will,” Thom said, just as if Plum were making sense, which she sadly acknowledged to herself as not necessarily true. “You’ll be a wonderful wife and mother, and I completely agree with you that you’re not being selfish.”

“Mmm.” Plum firmly told her conscience to take a holiday for the next two days, and picked up her spoon. “What was the advice the beggar had for me?”

“He wasn’t a beggar, he seemed quite well spoken, although he was rather dusty.” Plum glanced up and caught the look of curiosity her niece was bending upon her.

“He said that sometimes that which you’ve thought is lost, is found, and what you think you have, has vanished.”

Plum blinked for a moment, wondering if it was the lack of food that made Thom’s words seem incomprehensible, or if the old man’s advice was supposed to have some meaning for her. “Well, that was very nice of him, although it doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense, but I do appreciate the fact that he didn’t say something in reference to his…er…cods.”

They ate in companionable silence for a few minutes, the heavy drone of bees on the wisteria that hung next to the window the only noise. Plum wrestled with a variety of emotions — anger, fear, and a general all-purpose worry — as she spooned up the last of the soup.

“Aunt Plum?”

Plum dragged her mind from the painful contemplation of just how she was going to explain to Harry about her past. “Hmm?”

Thom stood with their soup bowls before the wash bucket, twisting a threadbare linen between her hands, her brow wrinkled in a frown. “You’re not marrying this Mr. Haversham on my behalf are you? Because if you are, I wish you wouldn’t. I know I’m not of much use to you, but I—”

Plum gave in to the need to hug the younger woman. “No,” she said, patting Thom’s cheek. “I’m not martyring myself for you, if that’s what you think. Mr. Haversham is a very nice man, I could tell that at once. He is a gentleman. He has a library. He wants children. And even if he isn’t wonderfully handsome, I like his face. His eyes are particularly nice, an attractive hazel that seems to change color. And the rest of him is”—a warmth tingled pleasantly within her at she remembered his large, strong hands with their long fingers. She had always had a fondness for a man’s hands, seeing in them a mixture of strength and gentleness that never failed to intrigue her—“just as pleasant. Does that put your mind at rest that I’m not marrying solely to put food in our bellies?”

Thom smiled, then leaned forward to kiss Plum’s cheek. “I hope you will be very happy, Aunt. You deserve a good life. When do you marry?”

“In two days, if Mr. Haversham is able to obtain a special license.” Plum turned and surveyed the small room with its two cots, two chairs, one table, and a collection of broken baskets that Thom fixed up as beds for her animals. “What do you say, Thom, are you willing to give up all this in order to live in a home that doesn’t leak whenever it rains, or allow the cold in during the winter?”

Thom smiled and divided up the last of her soup between the cats’ bowls and the goat’s bucket. “It will be a strain, but I will suffer in silence as best I can.”

Plum laughed again, and in a moment of pure whimsy, threw out her arms and spun around in a circle. “A family, Thom! At last, at very long last, I’m going to have a husband and children of my own! Life just cannot get any better!”