“Calf love,” Laura said dismissively. She folded the letter, setting it down on her dressing table between her matching silver-plated hair brushes and the single unopened bottle of scent left over from Papa’s last batch of fragrance. “I feel nothing for him now except friendship.”

It was the truth, though not the whole of it.

What she felt for George wasn’t love—nor friendship, either. What she felt was disappointment. Deep disappointment, not only in him, but in herself for ever having believed him worthy of her affection.

She’d had blinders on when it came to George, ever since she was a girl. Two years ago, those blinders had been unceremoniously ripped off. To see him again now would be uncomfortable, possibly even embarrassing. More so for him than for her, she’d wager. It was he who had inflicted the breach in their friendship. He who had issued the insult.

As for her own conduct, she had nothing to reproach herself with. Nothing save an excess of girlish romanticism and naiveté.

“If he treated you as a friend, I could bear it,” Aunt Charlotte said. “But he discounts you. Merely because our family has lately fallen on hard times—”

“It’s been three years since Papa died.” Laura gave her aunt an affectionate glance. “And times weren’t much easier then, if you’ll recall.”

Aunt Charlotte’s lips compressed. “I won’t agree with that. You may not have had much money, but when my brother lived, you had standing in this community.”

Laura didn’t argue with her aunt. What was the point? Aunt Charlotte preferred to live in denial of their present circumstances. In the past, when Laura had tried to discuss the family finances with her, it had only caused her distress. Nowadays, Laura kept such harsh realities to herself. Even Teddy wasn’t aware of how bad things really were.

“I’m the head of the family, Laura,” he was often wont to say. “It’s my burden to bear.”

But Teddy couldn’t bear it. The fever that had taken Papa three years ago had left Edward Hayes confined to a wheeled chair, a thin wisp of an invalid who—but for the grace of God—would have already slipped away from them.

“I don’t suppose Miss Talbot has sent a carriage for me?” Laura asked. Henrietta was unreliable about such things. An heiress herself, it rarely occurred to her that others were not as fortunate as she was. “Or will I have to walk to Edgington Park?”

Aunt Charlotte huffed. “She’s sent a one-horse gig, driven by one of their tenants of all people. It’s meant as an insult, I know it. I came this close to sending him off with a flea in his ear.”

“Where is he now?”