After they left, Sophie frowned and walked up the stairs to her sitting room. She walked over to the inkwell, touching its delicate, jeweled turrets with one finger. There was something wrong, deeply wrong, about Monsieur Foucault and Mr. Mustafa.

And yet she had scarcely even seen Patrick since the whole debacle of the Commonweal ball. How could she bring up the subject of Monsieur Foucault? As she thought about it, Clemens appeared at her door with more cards on his silver salver. The Duchess of Gisle was much in demand, and Sophie dismissed her concerns for the moment.

Later that week, Patrick ran into his brother on a crowded street, and they stopped for a moment, nonplussed.

“You’re giving me a damned bellyache, man,” Alex finally said.

“Your stomach is not my problem,” Patrick retorted. His temper was worn to a thread by nights of sleepless walking.

Alex scowled. “You might at least instruct a footman to help your wife,” he said acidly. “I found Sophie clambering out of her carriage yesterday by herself. She almost fell to the pavement.”

Fury raced down Patrick’s spine. He bowed his head politely. “I will of course instruct the footmen to be more assiduous.” He ignored the unspoken criticism—that he should be shepherding his wife around town now that she was almost seven months pregnant.

Alex swore. He had come to love his petite sister-in-law dearly, and something about the wounded bewilderment deep in her eyes told him that she had no idea why her husband was behaving so irrationally.

“Have you talked to Sophie about your fear of the birth?” he demanded abruptly.

Patrick’s body became even more rigid, if possible. His eyes were smoldering. “My ‘fear,’ as you put it, is an entirely reasonable reaction to the fact that one in five women die in childbirth. Unlike you, I hoped not to put my wife in danger for the witless pleasure of reproducing myself.”

The look in both men’s eyes was barbarous now, un-suited to the polite environs of Oxford Street.

“If you weren’t my brother,” Alex said with icy politeness, “I would call you out for that. As it is, I’ll tell you, brother, that you have gone stark raving insane. You are making yourself and your wife miserable for no good reason other than senseless, childish terror.”

Patrick’s teeth ground together as he stopped himself from slugging Alex on the spot.

“You tell me,” he finally said, “you tell me what is senseless about thinking that the odds of one in five are not good.”

“Those odds include women giving birth without doctors, without midwives, when they are ill or dying. How many gentlewomen can you think of who have died in childbirth?”

“Plenty,” Patrick said with quiet force. “And so should you, given that your wife almost joined their ranks.”