“I did.” George settled down to tell the tale. Truth to tell, she had no desire to wriggle out of talking about it. Rose and Lily were a sympathetic and attentive audience and it was a relief to be able to talk to people her own age. Emm and Aunt Dottie were lovely, and had helped her sort through her confused thoughts and feelings, but Rose was refreshingly blunt and Lily was wonderfully sympathetic.

Burton brought in a tray with a large pot of tea and a plate of mouthwatering cakes and dainty biscuits. Lily poured, and, while they ate and drank, George told them how the duke had singled her out at Rose and Thomas’s ball—Rose, of course, had had so much going on herself that she hadn’t noticed.

Lily had. “So that’s why you were asking about kissing,” she said with a smirk. “I knew it.”

George described how the duke had entrapped her, compromising her on the landing at old Mrs. Gastonbury’s soirée musicale. She didn’t exactly tell them she’d been caught with her dress hitched up and her legs wrapped around him—just that they’d been caught kissing. And that there and then, the duke had announced their betrothal to everyone at the Gastonbury party. And how the very next morning there was a notice of it in the papers—announcing it to the world!—and he hadn’t even asked her!

“What a sneaky beast.” Rose eyed George thoughtfully. “He was never like that with me. He was always quite cool and formal. It’s almost as if . . .” She pursed her lips, considering.

When George told them about how Aunt Agatha had conspired with the Duchess of Everingham to trick her into making what she thought was a deathbed promise, Rose hissed with outrage.

“I never did like that woman,” she said. “All the time I was betrothed to her son she was—I don’t know how to describe it—always very sweet to me but with a kind of poisonous undertone.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” George said. “Sounding as sweet as honey, but you know there’s something rotten beneath. Took me a while to realize it.”

Rose nodded. “She’s going to make a frightful mother-in-law.”

George wasn’t so sure. If the duke adored his mother, it would be ghastly, but he didn’t. He was very aware of her selfish, manipulative nature. And when it counted, he had stepped in, very much on George’s side.

“And of course the duke must have known what she—” Lily began.

“No, he didn’t,” George said quickly. “In fact, as soon as he realized what had happened, how his mother had tricked me, he insisted on exposing the lie, and . . .” She bit her lip.

“And what?” Rose asked impatiently after a moment.

“He offered to release me from the betrothal.”

There was a moment’s shocked silence.