“You are forgetting Oliver, Miles. She will have to uproot and move him to a new home.”

“Yes, a new home in a lavish house in the country. The owner of said house has virtually agreed to abandon it for Serena and her son.” He feigned a look of horror, “Oh, the hardship!”

Freddie gave Serena a look of resignation. “He is a man, there is no reasoning with him.”

“Oh, bosh Freddie. I only speak what is patently obvious.”

Serena sighed. “I wish the others were here.” By others she meant their friends from The Ivo Stefani Academy of Music and Art for Young Ladies, where they’d all met.

“If they were here they would weigh in behind me quickly enough,” Miles assured her.

“Not Lorelei,” Freddie pointed out.

Miles and Serena looked at one another.

“All right,” Miles agreed, “Not Lorelei.”

Lorelei had taught literature and poetry at the academy and was a self-proclaimed bluestocking and vociferous opponent of marriage, viewing any marriage as a prison for women.

“But Portia and Honoria would certainly support me,” Miles insisted.

“And how do you come to that conclusion?” Freddie asked.

“Well, neither of them is here right now, are they? They’ve both accepted positions that have taken them far away from London and their lives here. And look how well it turned out for Portia.”

Serena considered Miles’s words. Portia, who’d owned the failing academy where they’d all met, had been left deeply in debt when the school closed. She’d needed money so desperately that she’d behaved in a deceitful way to secure a lucrative position in Cornwall, even though Freddy, Miles, Honoria, and Serena had all tried to convince her to abandon her dangerous plan. In what appeared to be a fairytale ending she’d married her handsome employer and was expecting her first child.

As for Honoria—who owned the house they were currently sitting in—she’d rarely been home in months because she accepted painting commissions that took her all over the country.

So, yes, Miles was right: her two friends had stepped away from the comfort of what they knew to earn a living, and perhaps make a name for themselves or find happiness in the process.

“As for Annis,” Miles said when Serena didn’t answer, “We all know what she would say.”

Serena chuckled. “Fine, I will grant you Annis’s support without any argument.”

Annis, the language mistress at the academy, was a sensitive dreamer who believed even spiders and insects fell in love; she would likely think an industrialist seeking a wife was a perfect opportunity for romance.

“Well if you were to ask me what you should do,” Miles said, although nobody had. “I would send him my proposal along with an astronomical fee. I would charge enough that you and Oliver would not have to worry about money for a very long time.” The teasing glint in Miles’s eyes had been replaced by something far grimmer.

Like Serena and Freddie, Miles had to work for his living. He was the younger son of an earldom that was so impoverished his family couldn’t afford to give him an allowance after Miles left the army three years ago. Serena didn’t know why Miles chose to work as a dancing master—rather than take up a government post or something more respectable for a man of his class—and she didn’t feel like it was her place to ask. After all, there were plenty of things about her past she chose not to share with anyone, not even her dearest friends.