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Stella squeaked and looked down at the wiggling lump under her skirts.

It was Specs, of course. Stella had been so engaged in trying to convince Silvester of his inaccuracies that she’d forgotten all about the kitten.

Specs was not only awake; she was climbing Stella’s gown from the inside. Stella couldn’t help giggling as she caught up Specs’s squirming body and eased her into the open. “It’s merely my kitten, Lady Lydia! Voila!” She held Specs in one cupped hand. “She’s a mere baby but definitely a feline, not a rodent.”

Lydia was pressed back against the sofa, her breath coming in sharp gasps. Giles moved to seat himself beside his sister, an arm around her shoulders.

“I’m sorry I didn’t introduce you to her earlier, but she was asleep,” Stella added. “I didn’t realize that she’d woken up.”

Specs looked around, twitching her ears, and meowed in greeting.

“That’s . . . that’s disgusting,” Lydia cried. “You had a wild animal in your pocket. Next to your skin. It . . . It touched your undergarments!” She drew in another sobbing breath.

Silvester stepped forward. He picked up Specs and said reprovingly, “Lady Lydia, this is no wild animal.”

Stella thought she’d never seen anything more adorable than the duke’s huge, somewhat battered fingers curled around a tiny striped cat.

“I love the way the tips of her ears are touched in black,” Merry said, stroking one of Specs’s ears.

The dowager and Mrs. Thyme arrived at their tent out of breath.

“Oh, that’s just Stella’s cat,” Mrs. Thyme said, patting her bosom. “I thought we had experienced a rat infestation! One never knows at a picnic.”

“Cats do not belong in polite company,” Lydia insisted, her voice shaky.

Rather to Stella’s surprise, Mrs. Thyme said, “Our kitten certainly belongs in polite company. She is better trained than Julia Fitzwilliams’s dog, which snaps at people.”

The dowager peered closely at Specs through her right eye, the one with a monocle. “The Egyptians thought a great deal of cats,” she reported. “I believe they domesticated them, much as we do dogs. Does it care to walk on a leash?”

“Not yet,” Stella admitted, realizing that Specs wasn’t wearing her halter. She plucked a frayed mess of pink ribbons from her pocket. “I made a halter with a leash, but she seems to find it an indignity.”

Silvester threw her an amused look. “You’ll need something stronger than ribbons.” Specs rolled over on her back and batted Silvester’s fingers.

“She is so adorable,” Merry said. “Do come look, Lady Lydia!”

Specs caught Silvester’s forefinger with her front paws and started scrabbling at it with her back paws, pretending to attack.

“My turn to hold her,” Merry begged.

After a while, Lydia relented and came over to see the kitten more closely, though she refused to hold her, claiming that cat paws were revolting.

“You may bring that animal to my tent later,” the dowager announced. “I should like to make a closer examination in order to compare it to Egyptian hieroglyphs of felines. We elders will repose ourselves before the entertainments begin. A nap is called for.”

Silvester took his mother’s arm to escort her back to her seat. Stella caught her aunt’s martyred glower as she turned to follow. Mrs. Thyme truly was doing everything in her power to ensure that Giles had unchaperoned conversation with Stella.

Yasmin seated herself on one end of a sofa. The earl ushered his sister to a chair, and Stella sat down in the other, Specs on her lap. Harold and Merry seated themselves on the opposite sofa. After which Giles sat down so close to Yasmin that their legs were touching.

He glanced down at Yasmin without a trace of the deep affection with which Silvester regarded the lady. But Yasmin didn’t lean away from him, and Stella could have sworn that she never allowed a man to sit so close.

In fact, Stella had the distinct impression that her aunt was going to be disappointed about that proposal.

She fed Specs a piece of cheese, trying not to watch Yasmin and Giles. It wasn’t as if Giles was Stella’s property. He hadn’t declared himself, obviously. He often escorted her to the supper dance, and gossip columns paired their names, but that didn’t mean much.

In the marriage market, Stella was a loser and Yasmin a winner, so Yasmin had her pick of the available men. That was simply the way it was. It wasn’t the first time that Stella had learned to live with unpleasant facts.

“After the ladies repose themselves, the entertainment will begin,” Silvester said, returning to the tent. His eyes flew to Yasmin and Giles, and his lips tightened.

“I assume you will give a speech in Parliament tomorrow regarding the Corn Act,” Stella said hastily to Giles. “On which side lie your sympathies?”