“She doesn’t accept invitations,” he’d told William, “and only goes out now and then to the shops—”

“She must be in low spirits,” William said. He’d meant it jokingly, but the way in which his father glared at him made him feel ashamed. “Surely you’ve told her that no one knows?”

“Of course I have,” Lord John said impatiently. “So has Hal, with a surprising amount of delicacy. She just hangs her head and says she can’t bear to be seen. ‘On display’ was the rather odd way she put it.”

“Oh,” said William, somewhat enlightened. “Well, that does make more sense.”

“It does?”

“Well,” William said, a little awkwardly, “as a young widow, and the mother of the heir to Uncle Hal’s title … she’d attract—I mean, she did attract a good deal of … interest? At parties and dinners and that sort of thing, I mean.”

“And enjoyed such interest very much, so far as I could see,” his father observed cynically, giving him a sidelong look.

“Quite.” William turned aside, picking up and pretending to examine a Meissen plate from the sideboard. “But now she’s been … er … exposed, so to speak … even if only among us …” He coughed. “I think perhaps she feels she can’t act the part of a beautiful young widow, and, um …”

“She’d feel somewhat conscious, flirting with fatheaded young men, knowing that even if neither Hal nor I was present, we’d likely hear about it. Hmm.” Lord John appeared to find this dubious, but plausible. Then he made the next—inevitable, William supposed—deduction.

“After all, what would she do if one of the bright young sparks she touched caught fire and asked for her hand?” Lord John frowned, the next thing having occurred to him. He looked hastily over his shoulder, then moved closer to William and lowered his voice.

“What would she have done if that happened and we didn’t know the truth?”

William shrugged and spread his hands in an affectation of complete ignorance.

“God knows,” he said, with complete truth. “But it didn’t.”

Lord John looked as though he wanted to say something else, but instead merely shook his head and moved the plate two inches, back into its exact position.

“Perhaps she could go to luncheons, or tea parties, or—or quilting routs?” William hazarded. “Things with just women, I mean.”

His father laughed shortly. “There are two kinds of women in the world,” he said. “Those who enjoy the company of women and those who prefer the company of men. For one reason or another,” he added fairly, “it’s not always to do with lust or marriage.”

“And you imply that Amaranthus is not one of the first type.”