He looked at her.

She looked at him.

He looked at her more closely. “What are you saying?” he asked carefully.

Her cheeks turned ever so slightly pink. “Well,” she said, glancing off toward a perfectly blank wall, “I realize that we’re not the most . . . er . . .” She cleared her throat. “Is there an antonym for discordant?”

He stared at her in disbelief. “Are you saying you know. . . . ehrm, that is to say—”

“That we’re awful?” she finished for him. “Of course I know. Did you think me an idiot? Or deaf?”

“No,” he said, drawing out the syllable in order to give himself time to think. Although what good that was going to do him, he had no idea. “I just thought . . .”

He left it at that.

“We’re terrible,” Honoria said with a shrug of her shoulders. “But there is no point in histrionics or sulking. There’s nothing we can do about it.”

“Practice?” he suggested, but very carefully.

He wouldn’t have thought a person could be both disdainful and amused, but if Honoria’s expression was any indication, she had managed it. “If I thought that practice might actually make us better,” she said, her lip curling ever so slightly even as her eyes danced with laughter, “believe me, I would be the most diligent violin student the world has ever seen.”

“Perhaps, if—”

“No,” she said, quite firmly. “We’re awful. That’s all there is to it. We haven’t a musical bone in our bodies, and especially none in our ears.”

He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He’d been to so many Smythe-Smith musicales it was a wonder he could still appreciate music. And last year, when Honoria had made her debut on the violin, she had looked positively radiant, performing her part with a smile so wide one could only assume she’d been lost in a rapture.

“Actually,” she continued, “I find it all somewhat endearing.”

Marcus was not sure she would be able to locate another living human being who would agree with that assessment, but he saw no reason to say that out loud.

“So I smile,” Honoria went on, “and I pretend I enjoy it. And in a way I do enjoy it. The Smythe-Smiths have been putting on musicales since 1807. It’s quite a family tradition.” And then, in a quieter, more contemplative voice, she added, “I consider myself quite fortunate to have family traditions.”

Marcus thought of his own family, or rather, the great big gaping hole where a family never had been. “Yes,” he said quietly, “you are.”

“For example,” she said, “I wear lucky shoes.”

He was quite certain he could not have heard her correctly.

“During the musicale,” Honoria explained with a little shrug. “It is a custom specific to my branch of the family. Henrietta and Margaret are always arguing over who started it, but we always wear red shoes.”