The duchess, slender and frail looking, her skin a livid pasty white, lay propped up on pillows in a vast four-poster hung with heavy brocade. Her eyes were huge, red rimmed and haunted looking. She put out a thin hand. “Lady Georgiana,” she murmured weakly. “So glad . . .”

“How do you do, your grace?” George spoke softly, feeling awkward to be so healthy with this pallid husk of a woman lying before her.

The duchess sighed. “Oh, well, life is . . . uncertain,” she murmured. She gave a tremulous smile, then a coughing fit took her, as if simply to speak those few words had exhausted her. The attendant hurried forward and fussed around the duchess, then a few moments later was dismissed with a feeble wave. She went back to her corner.

“Now, Georgiana, tell the duchess what you came here to say,” Aunt Agatha said in a brisk voice that seemed far too loud in this otherwise hushed room.

“Oh, yes, you’re going . . . to marry my son, aren’t you?” The duchess gave her a wan smile.

“Um, n—”

“I wanted to meet you . . . before,” the duchess continued. “In case . . .” She gestured vaguely toward the array of medicines on the bedside table.

“Your grace, I—”

“It made me so happy when I learned . . . that my son was to marry after all. That time he was left at the altar . . . So distressing.” She pressed a vein-lined hand to her chest. “Your sister, wasn’t it?” She gazed at George out of tragic, red-rimmed eyes.

George shriveled inside. “My aunt.”

The duchess nodded. “Yes. One of the Rutherford gels . . .” She sighed again. “I’ve been so worried, you see, that . . . my boy will be left all alone when I . . .” She sighed. “When I go . . .” She dabbed a wisp of lace to her eyes, and when it came away, big fat tears rolled slowly down her hollow cheek.

George bit her lip. She hated it when people cried. She hardly ever cried herself, and then, only in private. When others cried, she felt mildly alarmed and quite helpless.

She glanced at Aunt Agatha, who gave an unhelpful shrug, as if to say, “It’s your responsibility, you deal with it.”

The duchess wheezed on. “I was so . . . distressed when dearest Agatha told me you were having . . . second thoughts—” She broke off to cough into the lacy handkerchief.

Second thoughts? George had never even had first thoughts. She’d never wanted to marry the duke. But how could she explain that to this poor lady? It seemed somehow brutal.

“For my son to be jilted twice . . . and by girls of the same family . . .”

Rose hadn’t jilted him. She hadn’t known Thomas was still alive. Nobody was to blame. And if the duke hadn’t publicly announced their betrothal without asking . . . But who could argue with a dying mother?

“Everyone will assume that there is some ghastly flaw in my son . . .”