“Betty, you know better.” Marie’s tone was pitying rather than chiding. “You let a man have your heart, you’re doomed. Look at poor Clare. A babe in her belly, naught but another few weeks of dancing left to her, and where’s her lordling? Off shooting grouse in Scotland. She’ll be lucky to survive the winter, and he promised he would marry her.”

Clare Trouveniers had been under the dubious protection of Lord Alvin Dunstable, known as Dunderhead to his friends. Stephen made a note to send Dunstable a pointed epistle and to slip Clare some coin.

“Lord Stephen doesn’t have my heart, not yet,” Babette replied. “It’s a near thing, though. You know what he does that just unravels me, Mare?”

“Pays well?”

“Of course he pays well, and he puts the money in my hand, and tells me how to invest it. His brother owns a bank, you know.”

“His brother owns half the City. Does Lord Stephen bring you flowers?”

“Flowers are predictable. Lord Stephen isn’t predictable.”

That observation was inordinately gratifying.

“He’ll be predictably married before too long,” Marie observed. “His brother’s wife was just delivered of yet another girl child. That’s four girls, Bets. I do love it when Providence refuses to bend to the will of the Quality.”

That observation—about Stephen having to marry—was inordinately disquieting.

“He doesn’t do what you think he’ll do,” Babette replied. “Take the last biscuit. We have rehearsal in the morning. You’ll need to keep up your strength.”

That Babette continued to dance when Stephen paid her well enough that she could put away her ballet slippers bothered him even as it earned his admiration. Men were fickle, fate was a mercurial old beldame, and bad luck was inevitable. To wit, Jane’s fourth child was indeed yet another girl.

Though Stephen was helpless to do anything but adore his nieces.

“You are perilously fond of your lordling,” Marie said, sounding as though her mouth were full of biscuit. “He doesn’t strike me as a man to inspire fondness. Cold eyes, never a wrinkle on his Bond Street finery. His canes are worth more than my poor papa’s life savings, God rest his soul. Have you ever heard Lord Stephen laugh? Does he snore? Does he forget where he put his sleeve buttons?”

“He smiles.”

What had laughing or snoring to do with anything, and who in his right mind would misplace gold sleeve buttons?

“He smiles like I smile at this butter biscuit, Bets, like he’s about to demolish something or someone and relishes the prospect. He’s fought duels, you know.”

“Men do. They don’t typically linger after an encounter with an opera dancer, don’t cuddle up with her like she’s a warm hearth and he’s a weary soldier.”

A cup hit a saucer with a definite plink. “Betty Smithers, what have I told you about cuddling?”

There were rules about cuddling?

“You break it off with Lord Stephen,” Marie went on. “The sooner the better. If you crooked your finger at Framley Powers, he’d be sniffing at your skirts in an instant. Powers is rich.”