Aunt Agatha arched a sardonic eyebrow. “What did you expect? That he wouldn’t notice your many inadequacies? I did my best, but . . .” She shook out her skirt, took hold of her ebony cane and rose. “I have other calls to make. Good day to you all. Ashendon . . .”

Cal rose and escorted his aunt from the room.

An ill-trained, boyish, impertinent hoyden. “How dare he! How dare she!” George jumped up and began to pace around the room. She didn’t know who she was angriest with—Aunt Agatha or the Duke of Everingham. She could happily shoot them both.

The knowledge that Aunt Agatha had offered her to him—and that he’d rejected her—even though she emphatically didn’t want him!—made her squirm with humiliation.

“It’s not for him to reject me! It’s for me to reject him.” The thought that she hadn’t had the chance to, that he had rejected her, unasked, was both mortifying and infuriating.

“He’s rather handsome, though, isn’t he?” Aunt Dottie had only seen him at the church, at his aborted wedding to Rose. “I do rather like a tall, dark, moody-looking man.”

“Handsome, perhaps,” George said. “And moody is right. He’s also cold, haughty, rude and arrogant. He looks down that long, aristocratic nose of his as if we’re all worms, beneath his notice.”

She’d only met him a handful of times, while his marriage to Rose was being arranged—and what a lucky escape for Rose that had been!—but she’d disliked him on sight.

“His friends—and he doesn’t seem to have many of them—call him Hart—his surname is Hartley—but he’s known in the ton as Heartless, and doesn’t that tell you something? Rose made a lucky escape, and I’m dam—” She broke off and glanced at Emm. “I’m blowed if I’ll be the sacrificial lamb in her place.” She clenched her fists. “Aunt Agatha had no right!”

“No, she didn’t,” Emm agreed. “And nobody will force you into marriage, dear, if you don’t want it.”

“No. But Aggie means well,” Aunt Dottie said, and at George’s look of surprise, she added, “Oh, I know she’s bossy and interfering and thinks she knows better than anyone what needs to be done and that we’re all sheep who need to be herded. But she does mean it for the best.”

George’s jaw dropped. “How can you say that?”

“To Aggie, marriage is the be-all and end-all. And she thinks it is for everyone. But . . .” Aunt Dottie sighed. “She made three marriages and not one of them brought her happiness. Wealth, yes, but happiness?” She shook her head.

Emm touched her belly. “You mean because she never had children?”