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“Thank goodness this mirror isn’t broken,” she said, stopping before an eleven-foot-high mirror set into the paneling. “Whose portrait is set at the top there, in the medallion?”

“His Grace,” Honeydew said, “as a young boy. The chandelier,” he added, “is only missing one strand of glass pearls.”

“Make a note of it,” Isidore said. “I am monstrously fond of the new embroidered chairs, Honeydew, and they would look lovely in this room…perhaps with cherry blossoms on a pale yellow background?”

The door behind them opened suddenly and Isidore turned about. In the doorway stood the dowager duchess. She looked pinched and faded, and yet the same pugnacious light that Isidore remembered shone in her eyes.

Isidore immediately dropped into a curtsy that nearly had her sitting on the floor. She didn’t raise her head from its respectful position for a good moment before murmuring, eyes still lowered, “Your Grace, what an honor. I had not thought to disturb you at such an early hour.”

“Honeydew,” the duchess said, “I’m sure that you have much to do.”

Isidore turned to Honeydew. “If you could arrange for the cart as we discussed, I shall rejoin you shortly.” The dowager seated herself on one of the sofas, so Isidore followed.

Her mother-in-law didn’t bother with preliminaries. “We never could abide each other,” she said grimly, “but need comes to want, and we have to work around that.”

“I am truly happy to see you in such good health, Your Grace.”

The older woman waved her hand irritably in the air. “My generation doesn’t care so much for that sort of flummery. You don’t give a damn about my health, but I imagine that you’re as interested in my son’s as I am. Have you spent some time with him?” She narrowed her eyes.

“I have. We dined last night with Godfrey.”

The duchess’s face softened. “Godfrey is a good lad. My elder, on the other hand—” she shook her head. “I’m not of a generation to beat about the bush, so I’ll tell you, he’s unhinged. I thought at first that I might be able to keep it from you, long enough to head off an annulment, but I realized that talk of brain fever is impossible between a man and a wife. I would have known if my husband grew unhinged, and I expect you know as well.”

Isidore cleared her throat. “He is certainly original in his thinking.”

“He’s mad. Cork-brained. He’ll cause you many a humiliation if you stay in the marriage.”

It was no more than Isidore herself had initially thought.

“But,” Simeon’s mother continued, “he’s a duke. That’s a fact and no one can take that away from him, whether he looks like a common thief or not.” She threw Isidore an icy look. “You’re on the old side to catch another husband, may I point out? You’ll never find one at the level of a duke. Your being Italian and all, you’d be lucky to catch a baron.”

Isidore didn’t bother to answer.

“He’s a duke and that makes you a duchess,” she continued. “It isn’t trivial to be a duchess. You’ll be among the highest in the land. People may talk behind your back about your husband’s proclivities, but they won’t do so to your face. And who gives a fart what they say behind your back?”

Isidore managed to close her mouth with an effort.

“Don’t look so mealy-mouthed!” the duchess snapped at her. “I’ve never lost a moment’s sleep thinking about what little people say behind my back. I advise you to do the same. You’re not born to be a duchess, but we chose you carefully enough.”

“You chose me due to the dowry my father offered,” Isidore put in. She was starting to feel a rising wave of fury. How could a mother speak about her son in such withering terms? True, Simeon was unusual, but—

“He promised you were a biddable girl,” her mother-in-law said crushingly.

“He was mistaken,” Isidore said, showing her teeth in an approximation of a smile.

“I realized that the moment I saw you,” the duchess said. “Only twelve years old, and as saucy as a lower housemaid. I thought then that it would fall apart before the wedding and likely it would have but for my son’s refusal to return to England. Of course he was suffering from brain fever.”

“He didn’t have brain fever,” Isidore said.

“Put your gloves back on!” the duchess barked. “No duchess would show her ungloved hands in public. I can see that making you into proper duchess material is going to be as hard as bundling my son into acceptable shape.”

“Your son is more than acceptable,” Isidore said, placing her gloves on the table before her with some precision.

It was a signal of war. The duchess, who had up till now resembled an elderly bulldog, suddenly straightened and took on the air of a mastiff. “I foresee the long lineage of the Cosways dragged into the dirt.”

Isidore smiled kindly at her. “I will do my very best to get the dirt out of this room, not to mention this house, which smells worse than most slums.”

“A duchess does not lower herself to such inconsequential matters.”