And he looked capable of mild affection, which was exactly the same emotion that Sophie felt she would bring to the match. They would have beautiful children (an important point), and Braddon would keep his mistresses unobtrusively in the background. It was too slighting to call him dependable, Sophie thought, as she swung into the first dance of the evening. Braddon was kind and without great sins, as far as she could tell. They would likely be happy together.

The evening wound on, and neither her betrothed nor anyone else important appeared at her side. Sophie danced with elegance and exquisite grace; only the most perceptive noticed that her contagious sense of humor was blunted, if not missing, tonight. A young beau found that his chattering pronouncement of love was greeted with a rather cool rebuff, rather than her usual kind response.

Sophie felt as if she were walking a tightrope, suspended over a dizzying audience of young men whose silly comments and sweaty palms made her task harder. She stopped looking for silver-shot hair. What was the point? She was to be a countess, not Patrick Foakes’s wife, she thought drearily.

She went to supper on the arm of the hostess’s son, Peter Dewland. Peter was a sweet-eyed, elegant gentleman whom Sophie had known for years. He was a restful companion, given that he showed no sign of expecting London’s reigning beauty to fall into his arms. In fact, Sophie thought approvingly, Peter had never courted her in any fashion.

“How is your brother?” Sophie asked. Peter’s elder brother had been cruelly injured in a riding accident and more or less confined to his bed for the past three years.

“He’s doing much better.” Peter beamed. “He’s been taking a course of treatment from the German doctor who has been at court in the last few months. Have you heard of him? The doctor’s name is Trankelstein. I thought it was all a bag of moonshine, myself, but Trankelstein’s massages actually seem to be working. Quill—that’s what we call Erskine within the family—is able to leave his bedchamber now, and the pain is diminished. In fact, he spends almost every day in the garden, says he doesn’t want to be inside ever again.”

Sophie truly smiled for the first time that evening, her face lighting up. “Oh, Peter,” she said, not even noticing that she was using his first name, “how perfectly marvelous!”

“If you would like,” Peter continued a bit shyly, “you could meet Quill, Lady Sophie. He’s sitting up in the library tonight and I know that he would like to thank you for the fireworks you helped to arrange.”

“I can’t accept any thanks,” Sophie protested. “The fireworks were entirely the work of the Earl and Countess of Sheffield. I simply happened to be in the party that attended Vauxhall.” The trip to Vauxhall, and the resulting fireworks display in the Dewland back garden, had happened well over a year ago. Sophie had stood, surrounded by beaux, in the deep heat of a London summer evening watching twisting, magnificent fireworks light up the sky. In actual fact, her beaux watched the fireworks. Sophie watched her dearest friend, Charlotte, standing beside the Earl of Sheffield and Downes—Patrick Foakes’s twin brother. She’d seen the secret blush warming Charlotte’s cheeks as she leaned back against Alex’s chest, protected from the eyes of gossips by the velvety night and the sparkling lights in the sky.