and the earldom of Redfield had its heirs for the next two generations.
Freyja pasted a smile on her face and tried to pay attention to the contents of Charlotte's letter, which she was reading aloud.
Thank heaven, Freyja thought-oh, thank heaven she was not at Lindsey Hall now. Alleyne and Morgan would be studiously avoiding the topic in her hearing and the neighborhood would be buzzing with the glad tidings. She would feel honor-bound to pay a duty call at Alvesley with her family, and both families would be horribly uncomfortable. The fact that she had almost been Viscountess Ravensberg, first as Jerome's bride and then as Kit's, would have fairly shouted itself into every small silence that fell in the conversation. Consequently, they would all have chattered brightly without ceasing on any inane topic that came to mind.
She would have to smile graciously at the viscountess. She would have to congratulate Kit. She would have to gaze admiringly at the baby.
Thank heaven she was in Bath.
She made an excuse not to accompany the other two ladies shopping. She must write some letters, she explained. But instead she did what she very rarely did. She flung herself facedown across her bed and brooded.
She hated what had happened-and what had not happened-to her life. Who would have dreamed all through her growing years that she would end up like this? Unmarried, unattached, unheartwhole.
She ground her teeth and pressed her fists into the mattress.
If the Earl of Willett were to turn up on Lady Holt-Barron's doorstep at this precise moment to propose marriage to her, she thought, she would probably fly into his arms and drown him in tears of gratitude.
And what a ghastly image that brought to mind.
Please God, let him not do anything so stupid.
It would be far better to go to the assembly tonight and flirt outrageously with the Marquess of Hallmere. He was a far more worthy opponent, and the encounter was far less likely to bear any dire and lasting consequences. It would be worth doing if only to see the marchioness his aunt with smoke billowing out of her ears and nostrils.
Freyja rolled over onto her back and stared at the pleated silk canopy of the bed and remembered the scene in the park, when she had punched him in the nose and ripped up at him, and the scene in the Pump Room the next morning, when he had wreaked his devilish revenge. She thought of his grandmother's dinner party and their verbal sparring there. She thought of the horse race in which she had beaten him fair and square and of the embrace that had followed. And then she remembered their first encounter in her inn room on the way to Bath and first chuckled and then laughed out loud.
How ignominious it was that she had pined for Kit Butler for three long years after their brief summer of passion and had not been able to shake off her attachment to him in the year since he had spurned her and married Lauren Edgeworth instead. And how ghastly that her family was so well aware of her feelings that Morgan had felt obliged to break the news to her in such a brief paragraph that if she had blinked she might have missed it.
She would get up right now, she decided, and go out for a long, brisk walk. And tonight she would dance her feet off.
Brooding was not in any way a satisfactory activity.
Joshua had enjoyed his few minutes alone with Constance in the Pump Room. She had never been a particularly vivacious or pretty girl. It had never occurred to him to find her attractive. But she had always been sensible and good-hearted. He had been fond of her, and even now he felt the pull of their relationship. They were cousins. Their fathers had been brothers.
She had answered all his questions about her sisters. Chastity, always prettier and livelier than she, was now twenty, but she had no romantic attachment. Prudence-Prue-was eighteen. She was doing well, Constance reported-remarkably well. She had blossomed with Miss Palmer as her governess, and she had made some dear friends in the village. She was happy. But when had Prue not been happy? No one could possess a sunnier nature.
Constance had been reluctant to talk about herself until he had decided to be frank with her and introduce the topic of her mother's hopes and plans. She had admitted to him then that she had a beau-a quite ineligible connection-whom her mother would dismiss if it were in her power to do so.
'Dismiss?' Joshua had asked. 'One of the servants, Constance?'
'Mr. Saunders.' She had blushed.
Jim Saunders was the steward he had interviewed in London and hired and sent to Penhallow-the one servant who was indeed beyond his aunt's power to dismiss.
'He is a gentleman,' Joshua had commented.
'And I am a marquess's daughter,' she had said bitterly. 'But I love him dearly. I will not marry you, Joshua, even though I may never marry him. You must not fear that I will join with Mama in trying to persuade you. And even if she were to induce you to make me an offer, I would say no.'
'I will not,' he had said. 'You are my cousin and therefore dear to me. But you are not the bride I would choose.'
'Thank you,' she had said, and they had looked at each other and laughed. She had looked really rather pretty as she did so.
But she spoke a somewhat different story when he led her out onto the dance floor at the Upper Assembly Rooms that evening for the opening set of country dances. She was clearly agitated, though she did not speak until they were well out of earshot of her mother.
There was not a vast crowd in attendance, and many of those who were there were elderly. Nevertheless, James King, the master of ceremonies, had done his job admirably well and had coaxed almost everyone onto the floor who was not confined to a Bath chair. Joshua's aunt was not dancing, of course-she was still wearing her black mourning clothes. But Lady Freyja Bedwyn was. She was looking magnificent indeed in an ivory gown with a gold netted tunic, her hair swept up into an elaborate coiffure and tamed with gold and jeweled combs.
But there was no mistaking the fact that something had happened to shake Constance out of her usual placid
