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“Greedy bird,” the dowager muttered. She cast a look at Stella. “Are you enjoying your first Season, Lady Stella?”

“No,” Stella replied. The duck’s legs were lazily paddling in the blue-green water, her eyes fixed on the toast in the dowager’s hand. She must have been too hungry to join the rest of the fowl, who had quacked their way down the river, legs pumping vigorously.

“I didn’t care for mine, either,” Her Grace remarked. “I don’t remember it very well now, thank goodness. All the little humiliations fall away with years.”

Stella doubted that, but she held her tongue.

The duck quacked loudly, wanting more bread, and the dowager stepped toward the water. “Come closer, duck!” she commanded. “I need that hat back. I sewed the band on myself.”

Given her monocle, Her Grace’s vision was as imperfect as Stella’s, which meant that she wasn’t good at judging distances. “I think you’re—”

Too late.

The dowager slipped, but managed to land on her feet, albeit up to her calves in green, muddy water. The duck backed up at the splash, but kept her beady eyes fixed on the remaining bread, dampened but still in hand.

“Hell and damnation!” the dowager exclaimed. “I’ve lost my monocle!” She kicked up a billow of mud.

Stella came to the edge of the river. “May I help you out, Your Grace?”

The dowager shook her head. “Not yet. I’ll have that hat if I have to swim for it.” She floated the remaining toast onto the surface of the water. The bird swam toward her, and the dowager quickly snatched the hat, pulling it over the duck’s beak.

“Bravo!” Stella couldn’t help laughing.

The dowager grinned at her. “The water is a pleasant temperature, but I suppose I must clamber out. Lady Stella, if you would be so kind?”

The veteran of many disasters, Stella prudently kicked off her slippers before she stepped to the riverbank and leaned forward—and then plunged into the river when the dowager tugged harder than she expected.

Cool water splashed her face as she fell to her knees in the mud. Gasping, she slapped a hand over her glasses.

“Bloody hell,” the dowager exclaimed, backing up. “I do apologize, Lady Stella.”

“I’m quite all right,” Stella gasped, managing to scramble to her feet while still holding on to her spectacles.

Her gown was soaked to her hips.

Lady Yasmin regularly dampened her petticoats, which made them cling to her slender thighs. Stella’s were not slender. She looked down at herself, fruitlessly plucking drenched fabric from her stout legs.

“We’re a pretty pair,” the dowager commented. “Wet as hens, and no one to notice our plight. My son is so wrapped up in longing for a woman who doesn’t give a bean for him that I could drown out here before he’d notice.”

“Oh,” Stella said. What could she say? It was true.

“He’ll get over it,” Silvester’s mother said moodily, shooing away the duck, who was edging closer in case more bread was to be had. “But not before she breaks his heart, drat it. Being a mother isn’t always fun.”

Stella scooped up her skirt and began to wring it out before she realized the idiocy of that gesture. “Will you take my arm, Your Grace? The bank is slippery, but surely we can climb it together.”

“I ought to try to find my monocle first, though I mustn’t lose the hat.” The dowager slapped the duck’s hat on her head and serenely tied the soggy white ribbon under her chin, leaving the red and green ones drooping over her shoulder.

Stella burst into laughter.

Smiling, the duchess pointed a dripping hand. “You’re one to laugh! I heard about you wearing that wretched Egyptian crown. I tried it on once in private, and I resembled an old eagle. We could have a contest to judge whose millinery is the least attractive.”

“I believe you have the advantage,” Stella said, giggling. “The duck’s hat looks like the cupola on an ill-designed pagoda, if you’ll forgive the presumption, Your Grace.”

“Likely you looked as pretty as you do now, even in an Egyptian crown,” the dowager conceded.

Stella stopped breathing from pure surprise.

No one had ever called her pretty. Ever.