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“Do you know . . .” Aunt Marian spoke with crisp casualness. “I was in love once.”

Lucy’s eyes flew up. “What? You weren’t!”

Aunt Marian raised a thin brow. “Hadn’t love been invented yet? It’s true, I’m a dizzy age.”

“It’s not your age,” protested Lucy. “It’s your nature. You’re so . . .” Words bounced around inside her head. “Impervious.”

“Hmm. Is that my nature?” She seemed to mull it over. “Well then, he found the chink in my armor. He was absolutely dashing. I was a fool for him.”

Aunt Marian spoony over a dashing young man! Impossible. Lucy could only stare. Aunt Marian pursed her lips.

“And then,” she continued, “I discovered he was using me to make another woman jealous. An actress.”

“He was an actor?” breathed Lucy, trying to picture the man who could have turned Marian’s head.

“No, an earl.” Aunt Marian smiled wryly. “Which means I might have known better. And so might she have. But I was besotted, and Celestia was an egoist.”

“Celestia Jordan?” Lucy heard fabric tear. Dear Lord, she’d ripped the handkerchief. But truly, Aunt Marian vying for a nob with Celestia Jordan? It boggled the mind.

Aunt Marian laughed at Lucy’s shock.

“He was bankrupt to boot, engaged to a Welsh heiress. When Dodie Thistleship learned of our connection, she threatened to tell the heiress. It was a proper mess.”

Lucy bounced on the bed, sputtering her indignation.

“Blackmail! That’s how Dodie Thistleship came to take the credit for your designs? You were protecting a dashing earl?”

“His creditors were vicious.” She lifted one shoulder in a stiff shrug. “I feared for his life. Of course, the fiancée broke the engagement anyway.”

“Over you?”

“Over Celestia.” Aunt Marian resettled a pin in her hair. “If she were robbing the crown jewels, she’d still have demanded a spotlight.”

Remarkable. Lucy blinked. “And was the earl slain for his debts?”

“He married an American whose father owned a railroad. Your soup is getting cold.”

Lucy took the bowl. The soup was tepid but rich. Heavenly. It felt as though a decade had passed since her last meal. She slurped greedily. Aunt Marian watched her with satisfaction.

“Sniveling, but not starving yourself,” she observed, standing creakily. “I predict a full recovery.”

Lucy put the bowl on the tray and clasped her hands.

“I’m in love with a duke,” she confessed. Aunt Marian froze. The lamplight turned her spectacles into two shining discs. Divine judgment. Lucy looked up at her.

“And is he in love with you?” came the voice on high.

She refused to entertain the question. What did it matter?

“There’s nothing between us,” she muttered.

“Good,” retorted Aunt Marian, moving her head so that her eyes showed again through her lenses, dark and penetrating. “Heartache now means a world of troubles avoided down the road. A duke!” She folded her arms. “And I thought the worst I had to fear was that you’d taken a fancy to that goon of an architect, the handsome Mr. Turner who fell on his head.”

Frowning, she turned and made her way slowly to the door.

Lucy flopped back on the bed, put her pillow over her face, and punched it slowly, over and over again.

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