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“Nine days’ wonder, indeed.”
“Society waits with bated breath for the announcement of a betrothal or a marriage forged over the anvil in Gretna Green.”
“And they will wait for as long as I can hold fast,” Felicity said. “Has no one else committed a social crime?”
“Well, Miss Miranda Ashworth is betrothed to the Viscount of Walbershire.”
“He is seventy if he is a day!”
“According to theon-dits, one of your cousins, Odious, I believe, had thought to court her.”
“Unlikely. Not that he thought it, but that her family would have wanted a smelting scion for their daughter. Despite her own humble origins.” Felicity aped a dowagerish tone, and they both laughed.
“A title makes all good.” Jemima leaned forward and grasped her hand. “And here at Lowell Hall, it cannot be all bad.”
“It is not. It is that…” Felicity turned to look in the glass and gestured to her coiffure. “My hair is lovely, but it is not at all the done thing, and I hesitate to go below where few will see me, for fear of being thought original or forward. And yet I think I can foster a stud and hold up my head? Neither fear the scuttlebutt, nor let it affect me? Leave here without having wed the duke and expect to be left in peace? I cannot carry on in business if I cannot carry off an unusual coiffure.”
“O’Mara mentioned you’ve been going about the place kitted out in men’s clothing,” Jemima said.
“Is that progress?”
“It is dead shockin’, as we would say in the Northeast.” Jemima rose and laid out a chemise, a set of stays, and silken stockings. “But it is also thumbing your nose at convention. I wonder you do not tell the duke about Himself and the mares.”
“I did mention it, the first evening. I got on my high horse and delivered my conscientious husbandry speech. He mocked me.”
“Mocked you?”
Felicity shrugged. “Perhaps he was teasing. As I begin know him better, I perceive he is all bark and no bite.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Jemima muttered.
Felicity looked at herself in the glass. “And then…”
“And then?”
She cast her eyes down. “The subject turned.”
“Did it.” Jemima folded her arms. “How did it do so?”
“Well, he kissed me.”
“Was it unpleasant?”
“Oh, no. Not unpleasant.”
“Unwelcome?”
“No…”
“If it was unwelcome, then we shall leave here this instant. You will not be left to receive his advances against your will.”
“No, Jem, I do not fear them. In fact, I may like to take them further.”
“How far?”
Felicity covered her face with her hands. “I cannot speak of it, not even with you. And if I cannot speak of it, however shall I do it?” She shook her head. “In any case, I have kept the secret of my mares for so long, I am not accustomed to the idea of speaking of that, either.” Felicity rose and took the chemise behind a dressing screen. “He is determined to marry me. Me, of all women. It occurred that if he is so intent, I would make my stud a condition of the union.”
“How?”
