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She was even nice.

She was perfect.

He wrote his sister with the news that he’d found precisely the woman whom she bade him to marry.

He escorted Edith to a concert at St. Paul’s, since she was fond of orchestral music. He wasn’t, but it didn’t matter. He met her daughters, who were unexceptional, well-mannered young women.

She suggested that he send his daughters to an elite seminary in London. “Children,” she said, “thrive in groups, and the idea that children of the nobility do best with a governess is an old-fashioned idea.” He agreed, thinking that Betsy, in particular, would enjoy school.

He decided to ask her to marry him.

He couldn’t have Ophelia, and the lady was nice enough.

Chapter Nine

When the duke sent a note the afternoon following their snowy adventure, accompanied by a bunch of exquisite hothouse posies, Ophelia asked Fiddle to have them put in a vase in the morning room, then changed her mind and brought them to her bedchamber.

Of course, Hugo wouldn’t pay her a call. It would be a waste of his time. She had refused him, roundly and without hesitation.

He needed a wife.

Still, when the snow was cleared away and Maddie appeared a few days later, full of news about the duke’s exploits around London, she felt unaccountably disappointed.

It was absurd—as absurd as the fact that she still found herself lying awake at night, her light nightdress feeling like a wool blanket, her body prickling with unusual and unwelcome desire.

After three weeks had passed, it became clear that His Grace had found his next duchess.

“Lady Woolhastings,” Maddie reported, wrinkling her nose. “Really, I would have thought he could do better. She’s so old. And so . . . Well, I do think it’s sad when a woman won’t accept her age, don’t you think? She has to be fifty-two if she’s a day and she plans to marry a man at least a decade younger.”

“May I give you another cup of tea?” Ophelia asked. She was horridly shaken, but determined not to show it. Hugo was nothing to her.

One night, one silly night.

Thank goodness, no one knew of it.

“Yes, please, with sugar,” Maddie said. “My husband says that His Grace is making certain there won’t be any more children, and God knows, that is a good idea. I know Lindow is rich as Croesus, but establishing all those sons, not counting the heir, and dowrying two daughters would bankrupt anyone.”

“That seems mercenary, but I suppose . . .” Ophelia’s voice died away. Hugo had been willing to marry her, unless he was fooling, but she didn’t think he had been. Hard thinking in the middle of the night had convinced her that her initial impressions were correct: He had looked at her as no man ever had before.

But she had sent him away.

And he had stayed away.

“It’s too bad,” Maddie said, putting more sugar into her tea. “He was quite taken with you. If you hadn’t left the ball so suddenly, you might have bewitched him and become a duchess.”

“You yourself told me that he was too much for me,” Ophelia pointed out.

“I changed my mind once I spoke to him,” Maddie said. “One of us should have taken him, and he didn’t want me.”

“If he hadn’t been looking for a nanny, he might well have fallen for your charms,” Ophelia said, rather hollowly. And then she added, “Although your husband would not have been happy.”

“Who cares what Penshallow thinks?” Maddie said, hunching up a shoulder. “Yesterday I received the most horrid, ill-written note that you can imagine, informing me that my husband had been making children’s stockings.”

“What?”

“I was confused too, but it seems that he’s gotten his mistress—one of his mistresses—with child. I made him tell me all.”

“Oh, Maddie.” Ophelia reached out and covered her cousin’s hand with hers. “I’m so sorry. What shall you do?”