Honoria, on the other hand, saw season three looming ahead, and her mother’s interest in seeing her well-settled was tepid at best. It wasn’t that she didn’t want Honoria to marry; rather, she just couldn’t bring herself to care overmuch.

She hadn’t cared overmuch about anything after Daniel had left the country.

So if Mrs. Royle ran about cooking extra sweets and forcing her daughter to change gowns based upon something she might have overheard about someone’s favorite color, she was doing it out of love, and Honoria could never fault her for that.

“You’re a dear to help me with the preparations,” Mrs. Royle said, giving Honoria a pat on the arm. “All tasks are made easier with an extra pair of hands, that is what my mother always told me.”

Honoria rather thought she was providing an extra set of ears, not hands, but she murmured her thanks nonetheless and followed Mrs. Royle to the garden, where she wished to supervise the picnic arrangements.

“I think Mr. Bridgerton has been looking rather keenly at my Cecily,” Mrs. Royle said, stepping out into the not-quite-sunshine. “Don’t you?”

“I had not noticed,” Honoria said. She hadn’t noticed, but drat it all, had he?

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Royle said, quite definitively, “at supper last night. He was smiling most broadly.”

Honoria cleared her throat. “He’s a rather smiling sort of gentleman.”

“Yes, but he was smiling differently.”

“I suppose.” Honoria squinted up at the sky. Clouds were rolling in. It didn’t quite look like rain, though.

“Yes, I know,” Mrs. Royle said, following Honoria’s gaze and misinterpreting the reason for it. “It is not quite as sunny as it was this morning. I do hope the weather holds for the picnic.”

And for at least two hours thereafter, Honoria hoped. She had plans. Plans which—she looked about; they were in the garden, after all—required a shovel.

“It will be such a tragedy if we have to move indoors,” Mrs. Royle continued. “One could hardly call it a picnic in such a case.”

Honoria nodded absently, still analyzing the clouds. There was one that was a bit more gray than the rest, but was it drifting toward or away?

“Well, I suppose there is nothing I can do but wait and see,” Mrs. Royle said. “And no true harm done. A gentleman is just as likely to fall in love indoors as out, and if Mr. Bridgerton does have his eye on Cecily, at least she will be able to impress him at the pianoforte.”

“Sarah is quite accomplished as well,” Honoria remarked.

Mrs. Royle actually stopped and turned. “She is?”

Honoria wasn’t surprised that Mrs. Royle sounded surprised. She knew for a fact that she had attended last year’s musicale.

“We probably won’t be inside, anyway,” Mrs. Royle went on before Honoria could comment further. “The sky doesn’t look so terribly ominous. Hmmph. I suppose I must admit that I had been hoping Mr. Bridgerton might take an interest in Cecily—oh, I do hope that maid catches her in time to get out the blue dress; she’ll be cross if she has to change—but of course Lord Chatteris would be even more exciting.”