“Large groups are hard for her. She does much better speaking one on one with a person.”
“I don’t mind speaking with her. Do you think she would want company by the window?” Penelope asked.
Mrs. Morgan’s eyes lit up. “She would love that. She does like people, and meetings like this never used to be a problem. It has only started lately. She has had a few disappointments.”
Penelope started to stand, but Mrs. Morgan put a hand on her arm. “However, she might feel more comfortable with a woman closer to her own age.”
Penelope blinked, then turned to Mercy. Mercy blinked back. True, Penelope was three years Mercy’s senior and married, but it wasn’t as if she were an octogenarian. If Mercy had to guess, Miss Morgan looked to be closer to Penelope’s age. Mercy caught Mrs. Morgan’s eye. “You think I should go?”
“Oh, could you? It would mean so much to her.”
This meeting was getting stranger and stranger, and Mercy wanted nothing more than for Mama to enter the room so she could take over hostess duties. Perhaps Mercy should have waited to hear exactly how Mama knew them before allowing them into the drawing room. Still, if given the choice between sitting with Mrs. Morgan or her daughter, the daughter was definitely preferable. Mercy gave Penelope a sympathetic shrug and stood.
Mercy reached Miss Morgan just as she heaved a large sigh. She jerked in surprise when she noticed Mercy standing beside her. “Oh, you didn’t need to come.”
“I wanted to make certain you were comfortable.”
“I’m much more comfortable here than at the tea table.”
“Lady Yolten is rather intimidating, isn’t she?”
Miss Morgan’s eyes flashed in surprise, and then the corners of her lips turned up. “You are toying with me, aren’t you? My mother is intimidating. Lady Yolten seems lovely.”
There was only one chair by the window, and Miss Morgan occupied it, so Mercy sat halfway inside the windowsill. “She is, isn’t she?”
“You’re fortunate in your friends.”
Mercy nodded, for she was, and she was extremely grateful for her good fortune. Perhaps this Miss Morgan needed a bit more fortune in her life. “How are you enjoying the Season?”
The hint of a smile that had been on her face earlier dropped. “I am enjoying it,” she answered.
“But?”
Miss Morgan snuck a glance at her mother, but she and Penelope were deep in discussion about the quality of the tea. “I’m afraid I’ve become a bit of a disappointment to Mama.”
Miss Morgan was a beauty, with her blonde curls and pert little mouth. She had a quiet demeanor that many men looked for. What on earth could have made her a disappointment? Her shyness, perhaps? “I find that hard to believe.”
“It’s true. I’m practically on the shelf.”
“You are hardly—”
“This is my fifth Season. You don’t need to pretend otherwise.”
Miss Morgan couldn’t be more than a couple years older than Mercy, and Mercy had not once worried about an impendingshelf.But that was most likely a privilege Miss Morgan didn’t share. She didn’t know the Morgan family well enough to know their financial position or even their exact social standing. Perhaps Miss Morgan’s plight was valid. But what could someone in Mercy’s position say to comfort her?
“It is much better to be on the shelf than married to the wrong person.”
“I can see how you would think that. But in your situation...” She very nearly blushed. “With one of the kindest, most passionate men courting you, I’m not certain you can fully grasp what I’m feeling.”
Kindest and most passionate... Did she mean the duke? Kind, certainly, but passionate? She hadneverseen that side of him, even though he’d mentioned it in regard to Lady Plymton. “The duke? Do you know him?”
“I did. I had thought... well... I had thought perhaps he and I...” That little mouth of hers quivered. What was Miss Morgan trying to say? But then her eyes lifted, half full of tears, andMercy knew.
Heavens above. She had a sudden desire to press her own forehead against the cool glass of the window. The Duke of Harrington and this sad little creature crouching in the corner of her drawing room? What had he done to raise her hopes?
“Oh,” Miss Morgan said. “But I shouldn’t mention that, not when he is so ardently pursuing you.”
Ardently? Chess games and well-turned dances were hardly what she would call ardent. “I don’t know that I would say he is ardently pursing me.”
