Eloise was silent for a second. “I am very sorry to learn that. I know how much you love children. Guard your one child then. Did you ever wonder why I was so stern with regard to your playmates?”

Sophie nodded. She was never permitted to visit other children, and her nanny was strictly instructed to chase off anyone who approached them on their brief, supervised walks.

“I had to protect you, Sophie. You are my only child.” Eloise visibly regained her composure. “But what is important is not the number of children you have, but the pleasure you are able to take in your marriage. A marriage like mine—of bitterness on one side and disinterest on the other—is worse than having no children at all.”

Eloise looked faintly embarrassed. “To be blunt, never refuse your husband in bed. I have thought for years that perhaps I shouldn’t have rashly ordered your father from the bedroom. I was a capricious little fool. Now that I’m almost forty, I would give anything to take back those words. Don’t do it, Sophie. No matter how angry you are, never let Patrick know. Never banish him from the room. Unless you’re with child,” she added.

Sophie nodded silently.

“I won’t, Maman,” she whispered.

Just then Sophie’s maid, Simone, entered the bedchamber followed by a small phalanx of maids. Simone’s arms were full of crackling tissue paper.

“Begging your pardon, my lady,” Simone said, curtsying in the marchioness’s direction, “but we are ready to start packing Lady Sophie’s trunks now.”

Eloise nodded and stood up, then paused, looking at her daughter. She ran her hand over Sophie’s hair. “He cannot help but fall in love with you, mignonne. I am sure all my advice is for naught.”

Sophie smiled at that, but after Eloise left the room she sat for a moment, hands clutched around the small leather book she held. Her mother was right. Eloise’s blunder as a wife had been to deplore behavior over which she had no control. In other words, Sophie thought, if Patrick’s eye wanders, I must appear never to notice.

Lord Breksby drummed his fingers on his desk in an unusual display of agitation. “This is infamous!”

A little man, dressed in a thoroughly insignificant fashion, flashed Breksby an amused look. “Napoleon always has been an inconvenient sort of chap,” he agreed.

“He’s beyond the pale,” Breksby said, almost choking with annoyance. “How on earth does he think to get away with it?”

“Pure luck that we found out,” his guest pointed out.

Breksby sighed. “I suppose I’d better tell Patrick Foakes.”

“M’understanding is that Foakes is setting off on his wedding trip … down the coast.” With a mere twitch of his eyebrows, the small man conveyed that he was perfectly aware of the reason why Patrick was sailing toward Wales.

“Yes, well. Damnation.” Breksby drummed his fingers again.