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“You were never a strumpet,” Sebastian said, looking down at her.

She met his eyes. They were the cloudless blue of a summer’s day. “I wouldn’t wish you to misunderstand the life I’ve led, Sebastian, out of foolish romantic notions that you have nourished in Italy. You only slept with one woman in your life, but you were merely one of a list who entered my bed. True, the list is not terribly long, but you know as well as I do that there are only four kinds of women in the world: maiden, wife, widow, whore. I would say that I have the last two nicely covered.”

He cupped her face in his hands. “Did you enjoy the first time you were unfaithful to your husband?”

She swallowed, and then raised her chin. “No, but I did it. And I enjoyed those who followed.” She said it defiantly.

“If Miles had returned to your bed; if he had shown any distress at your blatant, public seductions; if he had shown any wish to pleasure you himself, would you have sought out those men?”

There was a moment of silence.

She raised her face, eyes shining with tears. “I would have sought out you, Sebastian.”

He didn’t say anything, just swept her into his arms and held her as tightly as she’d ever been held. He smelled like apple trees, and woodsmoke. He crushed her face against a coat rougher than anything a marquess ever put on his body, and she just clung to him.

After a few moments he tipped up her chin and pressed a kiss on her lips. She swallowed, hard. “I must go.”

He nodded. “I am not saying this due to a lascivious impulse, but you can always find me in the gardener’s hut at the bottom of the apple orchard, Esme.”

“You’re living in a hut? You? ”

He nodded. “I’m enjoying it. But the important thing is that I’m there if you need me. For anything.”

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She couldn’t smile straight because she was going to cry again. He looked down at her silently, and then he said, “I thank God I didn’t marry Gina. Even if I had, I’d still be living at the bottom of your apple orchard. And what a scandal that would be.”

She made it up the frosty slope by herself.

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The Sewing Circle Meets at Lady Rawlings’s House The next afternoon came all too slowly. By four o’clock, Josie was so excited that she hardly knew what to do. She ran around the playroom with a little basket over her arm, trying to put all the soldiers in it so she could take them downstairs with her.

“Do you think my brother is in the drawing room already?” she kept shrieking. The idea was so exciting that she dashed around and around the room. That sort of unladylike behavior would have driven Nurse Peeves quite out of her mind, but Nanny just patted her head as she tore by, and asked if she wanted to use the chamber pot before going downstairs.

Her new friend Henrietta was sitting with Aunt Esme when they reached the parlor, and Josie was so excited that she ran in a little circle before she managed to drop two curtsies and say, “Good afternoon,” just as she’d been taught. Then Henrietta told her the story of the lost boots again, and Josie ate seven lemon tarts without feeling the least inclined toward sickness, so when Anabel had to go upstairs 164 Eloisa

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for a nap, Josie begged to stay. She sat quietly just in front of Henrietta, and started pulling the soldiers out of her basket, one by one, and organizing them into battle lines.

“Where did you find those toys?” Aunt Esme’s voice was sharp, just like Nurse Peeves’s when Anabel threw up on her. Josie shot her a quick glance, nudged just an inch closer to Henrietta, and said, “They were upstairs. Nanny said it was all right to play with them.”

Aunt Esme didn’t say anything more, and after a moment Henrietta patted her head, and said, “Why don’t you take your soldiers back to the nursery? I’m certain that Anabel is missing you.”

Josie knew as well as anyone that Anabel was still taking a nap. She began putting her soldiers back in the basket one by one, very slowly. Then she looked over at the settee and saw that Aunt Esme was crying again.

The first time Josie saw her aunt crying it was baffling, almost frightening. But now she knew Aunt Esme well enough to know that she cried quite often, so Josie just put the last soldier into her basket in a long-suffering type of way, and curtsied to her aunt. But after she curtsied to Henrietta, she whispered, “Do you think you could visit me tomorrow? And tell me the story of the lost little boots again?”

And Henrietta smiled at her and said perhaps, and so Josie didn’t mind going upstairs very much.

Which left Henrietta in the drawing room with Esme. She handed her a handkerchief. She had taken to carrying some extras in her reticule. Esme was in the stage of weeping in which she appeared to be having trouble breathing, but luckily Henrietta had seen at least two such attacks in the last week and had no fear of her extinction.