not weep here, ma'am-you must not fear that I will draw attention to you. I shall wait until I am in my own room at Lady Holt-Barron's. I brought six handkerchiefs with me to Bath. That should be a sufficient number.'
They had come up to the Marquess of Hallmere and Lady Constance Moore by the time she finished speaking. The marchioness smiled sweetly, Freyja bared her teeth in her feline grin, Lady Constance wore no detectable expression at all, and the marquess raised his eyebrows.
'Lady Freyja Bedwyn and I have been enjoying a delightfully comfortable coze together,' the marchioness said. 'We have been agreeing that you two cousins look delightful together. I trust you have been enjoying your stroll?'
'We have, Aunt,' the marquess assured her.
'And now,' she said, 'you may escort us back to our hotel for breakfast, Joshua. Are you to attend the ball at the Upper Assembly Rooms this evening, Lady Freyja? Joshua has insisted upon dancing the first set with Constance.'
'While I,' Freyja said with a sigh, 'am still anxiously hoping to avoid being a wallflower.'
There was a gleam of laughter in the marquess's eyes.
'I shall fetch my grandmother, Aunt,' he said. 'She is over by the water table with Lady Holt-Barron. May I escort you there, Lady Freyja?'
He offered his arm and she took it.
'Well, sweetheart,' he said as they moved beyond earshot of his aunt. 'Let me guess. She was warning you off her territory.'
'Whether I felt inclined to play there or not,' Freyja said. 'And I am not your sweetheart.'
'You displayed a great deal of admirable forbearance,' he said. 'I expected every moment to see you haul back your arm and plant her a facer.'
'I have never yet struck a lady,' she said. 'It would be unsporting. My tongue is a far better weapon with them.'
He threw back his head and laughed-and drew considerable attention their way from people who doubtless hoped for some renewal of the altercation between them that had so enlivened the morning scene here a few days ago.
'My guess,' he said, 'is that you routed the enemy quite resoundingly and sent it slinking off the battlefield in mortified disarray. That is a considerable accomplishment where my aunt in concerned. Will you dance with me this evening? May I reserve the second set with you?'
'How dreadfully lowering!' she said haughtily. 'Only the second set?'
'Remember,' he said, 'that I insisted upon the first set with my cousin. Actually I begged and groveled, but my pride does not like to admit that too readily.'
'And will you also beg and grovel for the second set?' she asked him.
'I'll go down on bended knee right here and now if you wish,' he said with a grin.
'You tempt me,' she said. 'But these people might put the wrong interpretation on the gesture and your aunt might suffer an apoplexy. I will dance the second set with you. At least it will relieve me of the humiliation of being a wallflower if no one offers to lead me into the first set. I have just been informed that a lady of my years and looks must be careful to cultivate at least a sweet demeanor.'
'No!' He grinned at her. 'I would pay a sizable sum to have heard your answer.'
They had come up to his grandmother and Lady Holt-Barron by that time, and the marquess bowed and took his leave, his grandmother on his arm.
'How very obliging of the Marchioness of Hallmere to stroll with you, Lady Freyja,' Lady Holt-Barron said. 'She is a sweet-natured lady, is she not? How sad that her health appears not to be robust. I daresay she deeply mourns her husband, poor lady.'
Though she had been reminded of her advanced age and less than gorgeous looks, Freyja was inclined to be far more cheerful on their return to the house on the Circus than she had been when they had set out for the Pump Room earlier.
The mood did not last. There was a letter from Morgan propped against her coffee cup in the breakfast room, and since Lady Holt-Barron had several letters too and Charlotte had one fat one from her betrothed, Freyja slit the seal and read it at the table.
There was a long, witty description of a village assembly that Morgan had been allowed to attend with Alleyne, since she was now eighteen and was to make her official come-out next spring. And there was a lengthy discussion of a book of poetry by Mr. Wordsworth and Mr. Coleridge that she had been reading. Sandwiched between the two was a brief, terse paragraph.
'A messenger rode over from Alvesley yesterday afternoon with a note from Kit,' Morgan had written. 'Wulf read it to us at teatime. Viscountess Ravensberg was delivered of a boy yesterday morning. Both are doing well.'
Nothing else. No details. No description of the raptures Kit must have expressed in the note. No comment on what Wulfric or Alleyne had said about the news. No description of how Morgan felt-she had always hero- worshipped Kit, who had been kind to her when she was a child with the double disadvantage of being far younger than all the rest of their playmates and of being the only girl apart from Freyja.
'Bad news, Freyja?' Charlotte asked suddenly, all concern.
'What?' Freyja looked up blankly at her. 'Oh, no, no. Absolutely not. Everyone is perfectly well at home. How is your Frederick?'
A son.
Kit had a son. With the oh-so-perfect, oh-so-perfectly-dull Lauren Edgeworth he had married. The viscountess was perfect to the last detail, it seemed. She had produced a son within one year of her marriage. And so Alvesley
