Serenity had been teary-eyed all morning, her thoughts wildly swinging between imagining the best and fearing the worst. Her dear father had, of course, noticed her distress at breakfast.
“What’s setting you off,” he’d asked. “It cannot be the sunrise, as its as foggy as an old man’s mind out there. Fog doesn’t set you off, now?”
“No, Papa.”
“You cannot be still brooding over Valor’s letter,” the duke said, “no sensible man in receipt of such nonsense will take it seriously.”
“I wish somebody told me that to begin,” Valor said.
“We all wish that, Valor,” Winsome said.
“Regret is a very usual thing, as I understand it, Valor,” Verity said.
“Papa, our aunt was very decided about it yesterday,” Serenity said. “She said he is a marquess and will be a duke someday, and will expect his future duchess to be a credit to him.”
“Oh, let me guess,” the duke said, “Lady Misery imagines a duke must be all dignity and restraint, and wish the same from his duchess.”
“Well, yes, I think that is what she meant.”
“I’ma duke,” her father pointed out. “When was the last time you caught me worrying over dignity or restraining myself in any fashion?”
None of them answered that, as they could not say.
“Never mind what Lady Misery thinks about it. She’s taken that latest butler out of the house which is the most useful thing she’s done in years. I count on Mrs. Right to tell me how it all came about and am prepared to be amused! Now, at elevenyou’ll take Nelson for a walk. I’ll venture you’ll find Thorpe at the gate into the square. Valor will make a heartfelt apology, and then Winsome will escort her back into the house as she’s done enough for one season. All squared away.”
“What am I to say, though?” Valor asked. “Should I pretend to be very sorry?”
“You shouldin factbe very sorry, Valor,” Winsome said in a scolding tone.
“Well, I am when you talk like that to me,” Valor said, crumbling her toast.
“Say you are sorry, it was a fit of pique due to your youth, and you have been punished by foregoing dessert for a week,” the duke said. “That ought to do it.”
“I’m not to have dessert? For a week?” Valor asked, in the panicked tone that can only come from a young person watching cakes and trifles slip out of their reach.
“No, no,” the duke said. “Just say it—it will make Lord Thorpe feel better.”
“You should tell the vicar about the making people feel better part,” Valor said. “He says you can never lie, but I said you could do it to make people feel better. Like how I tell Winsome her hair looks great, even when it doesn’t. He said I am too defiant and should repent of it. I said no.”
“What about my hair?” Winsome asked.
“It usually looks all right,” Valor muttered, “but then sometimes it doesn’t, and what’s the use in saying?”
The breakfast had gone on in such a manner, as the Nicolet household’s breakfasts usually did—wide-ranging debates from one subject to the next.
And now the hour approached eleven and they stood in the hall ready to don their pelisses and bonnets while Nelson pulled on his leash. They would proceed out and Valor would apologize and they would walk. If he was there.
If he was not there, Serenity was counting on the fog to hide her stupid weeping.
The clock chimed. “Come now, love,” Mrs. Right said. “As your father would say, let’s get this circus going.”
They proceeded out with Valor trudging behind them. It really was a heavy fog, the warmer air that had descended on London taking advantage of what was left of the snow on the ground to cast up a blanket of grey.
Serenity squinted in the direction of the gate, but though squinting might work in sunshine it did nothing in the fog. She walked closer and saw the outline of a man. Her heart beat faster and she hurried forward.
Then she stopped short. She could not see the man’s face yet, but the build was not right and the dog certainly was not right. It was not the great beast Havoc, but a much smaller dog.
