Again Aunt Dottie shook her head. “Children are a blessing, of course, but happiness is another matter entirely. I never married and never had children, but my life has been—and still is—a happy one. The trick, George dear, is to know your own heart and decide accordingly. I made my own choices in life, and have no regrets.”

And seeing her tranquil face and serene smile, George could believe it.

But she wasn’t Aunt Dottie and didn’t have her gentle, accepting temperament. Aunt Agatha’s interference made George want to scream. Or to hit someone—preferably the duke who’d so smugly rejected her—when she’d never wanted him in the first place! She was as tense as an overwound clock. She needed to get out, to escape from this smothering attention and breathe.

But the afternoon’s obligations stretched ahead of her. Morning calls, endless and unbearable, with coy questions about male attentions, and about Rose’s husband’s incredible return from the dead—that seven-day scandal still wasn’t over—and delicate and less-than-delicate inquiries about how the poor duke was taking it. A duke, pipped at the altar by some scruffy nobody—so scandalously delicious.

And then there were the gentlemen pursuing George . . . Cal dealt with the obvious fortune hunters pretty swiftly, but still, there were several gentlemen who, like Aunt Agatha, refused to believe she was serious about not marrying.

At the best of times George found morning calls difficult. Today they would be unbearable.

“I need to go out,” she said abruptly. “I want to take Sultan for a ride.” To get away.

“You already rode this morning,” Cal said, reentering the room.

“I need a longer ride.” She glanced at Emm. “As long as you don’t need me for anything, Emm.”

“No, you go and ride the tension away, George dear. Everything’s under control here; the last responses to the invitations are dribbling in, Burton has all the arrangements for the ball under control—he’s in his element, I suspect—and Rose is fully occupied getting the new house ready to move into—”

“Harrying hapless workmen,” Cal said with lazy amusement.

“And Lily’s off with her husband, I know not where,” Emm concluded. “You are free to do whatever you want.”

“As long as Kirk goes with you,” Cal added, naming the dour Scottish groom he employed to keep an eye on the girls when they rode out.

“Yes,” Emm said. “Because Cal is about to accompany me on a short walk in the sunshine, while it lasts.”

Cal blinked. “I am?”

“Yes, across the park to Gunter’s.” She dimpled. “The baby desires some more of that delicious pistachio ice cream they make.”

“Oh, the baby does, does it? Well, in that case . . .” Cal rose and helped his wife to her feet.