When Lord Turner arrived, for example, Aaron’s mouth set into a hard line. Phoebe had planned to remind her husband to be polite to her father—Aaron had no plans to forgive Turner for his history of unkindness to Phoebe—but she was too busy gaping, open-mouthed, at the fact that her father was arm-in-arm with Dowager Lady Loyd.
Hannah appeared from behind her father and mother by marriage and grinned at Phoebe’s expression.
“I know,” she said quietly while her husband looked around the room with a vague curiosity before returning to his preferred pastime of looking adoringly at Hannah.
“What ishappening?” Phoebe asked, not certain if she was delighted or horrified by what she was witnessing.
Hannah shook her head. “Nobody knows. She rode out to the country with us, and she immediately began telling Father all the things he was doing wrong. And instead of getting angry, he just… started doing what she said.”
“He seems… to be happy?” Phoebe observed, though there was considerable doubt in her tone, not because her fatherdidn’tlook happy but because she couldn’t quite recall a time when she’d seen her fathersmiling.
“It’s extraordinarily strange,” Hannah agreed, her hand resting on the curve of her stomach.
She was visibly increasing now, and everyone was politely ignoring the fact that she’d only been married for three weeks and was very obviously several months along in her pregnancy. It likely helped that Loyd would periodically reach out to lightly touch her protruding abdomen and get the softest, most awestruck look on his face.
It absolutely also helped that Aaron had stood up for Loyd at the wedding and glared daggers at anyone who had dared to utter so much as a whisper during the wedding.
“We will have to talk about thissomuch more,” Phoebe whispered hurriedly to her sister as she and Aaron turned to greet the next guests in the receiving line. Hannah gave her a nod and a wink before letting Loyd lead her away.
As they moved out of earshot, Phoebe heard him muttering solicitous things about getting Hannah a comfortable seat—“Since you ought not be on your feet in your condition, sweet,” he said softly.
It was annoying to be proven wrong, but in the case of her sister’s husband, Phoebe supposed she could live with having misjudged him.
In addition to their nearest and dearest, who had traveled to attend the party and would be staying in the guest rooms, Phoebe had invited various local personages to the event. The room filled—not to a full crush, but Phoebe preferred room to breathe over the social clout that came with a crammed ballroom—and she smiled as couples began dancing.
She enjoyed a waltz with her husband before he—looking entirely anxious over the possibility of being scolded again—accepted a turn about the room with Ariadne while David danced with a delighted elderly woman who was eighty if she was a day.
Phoebe retreated to the table of refreshments, where she found Clio also taking a break from dancing after a rousing country dance with Jacob, whose cheerful demeanor and good looks had made him a popular partner.
“Are you having fun?” Phoebe asked Clio. “Not that I mean to play hostess with you, of course—since this is your home, too.”
“I am having fun,” Clio agreed, bumping her shoulder against Phoebe’s fondly. “It’s nice to see the place so bright and happy. I wasn’t certain that I’d ever get to have this again.”
Just for a moment, Phoebe laid her head against Clio’s shoulder in a commiserative gesture.
“Well, now you have it whenever you wish,” Phoebe said. Then, because she couldn’t resist, she added, “Although, maybe a gentleman here will catch your eye, and soon enough, you’ll have a happy home of your own.”
Clio gave her a sidelong look.
“Married for, what, two months and you’re already a matchmaking matron,” she chided playfully.
“Oh, stop it,” Phoebe said, though she was not as horrified at the description as she might once have been. She’d learned that there were some parts of a conventional life that she did not mind in the least.
“Excuse me, Your Grace, but might I have this dance?”
As the opening strains of a waltz played, Phoebe heard her husband’s voice coming from her side. She turned to see him with a gleam in his eye and his hand extended.
“The two of you areterrible,” Clio chuckled, shaking her head. “Go. Go! I’m going to talk to someone who isn’t as dreadfully sentimental as the two of you.”
Phoebe didn’t mind being called sentimental, either; she found. She was extraordinarily sentimental when it came to her husband, and she was not apologetic about it in the least.
But she still was the kind of woman who flouted convention when it counted—because she danced many, many more dances with her husband than was socially approved of.
When the guests finally started leaving, either boarding their carriages or drifting upstairs to their rooms, Phoebe let herself linger in her husband’s arms, swaying together in the ballroom even though there was no more music playing. It wasn’t quite how she was meant to behave as a hostess, but she found that she couldn’t manage to care.
“Are you happy with how the evening went?” Aaron asked as he reached up to tuck a loose tendril of hair behind her ear. Phoebe’s pins had put up an admirable fight, but after hours of dancing, celebrating, and scurrying around to talk to different people, her coiffure was not what it once had been.
“I am,” Phoebe declared, wrapping her arms around his waist and pulling him far closer than any real dance would allow.
