But when Braddon smiled so sweetly at his Maddie that she lost her fear of dancing in front of the ton and returned his smile, Sophie wasn’t the only woman in the room who got a lump in her throat and a shine in her eye.

The tightness in Patrick’s chest had nothing to do with Braddon. That bounder had obviously played fast and loose with Sophie’s emotions. There she was, almost crying in public because Braddon was engaged again.

But it couldn’t be called Braddon’s fault, could it? Patrick’s conscience was uncomfortably awake. Sophie would be married to Braddon right now, he thought with dogged self-hatred, if I hadn’t slept with her first.

He swept his wife into the dance. If nothing else, I can protect her from curious eyes, Patrick reasoned. Sophie would be ridiculed for crying over a man she had jilted.

They danced silently. Sophie kept her head turned away, afraid that Patrick would be able to read in her eyes that she had lost her anger. She was too humiliated to face the fact that she would probably always welcome back the rake she had married, no matter how far he strayed. She loved him too much.

They were swept in to dinner in a wave of babbling dancers and found seats around a large round table. Halfway through the meal Sophie excused herself from the table, not coincidentally when Patrick had gone to fetch another cup of syllabub.

“Please, Sissy, do tell my husband that I will be in the ladies’ retiring room,” she said to her friend.

Sissy Commonweal looked at her with the sympathetic eyes that seemed to greet her everywhere in the ton these days. I’m sure she knows where Patrick spends his nights, Sophie thought tiredly. It’s a wonder that no one has told me the black-haired woman’s name. She walked away from the table without looking back, not even seeing Patrick weaving his way back to the table with her syllabub.

She couldn’t stay in the retiring room forever, however, and Patrick found her later and claimed a second dance. Thankfully, it was a country dance, which meant there would be little intimacy. Sophie was mechanically going through the figures when suddenly, through a gap in the crowded room, she saw something that made her heart thump sharply in her throat. Her mother, Eloise, was smiling sweetly and drawing Madeleine over to speak to an elderly Frenchwoman—undoubtedly Madame de Meneval, famed for her ability to expose fraudulent French aristocrats. Without a second’s hesitation, Sophie snapped out of the steps, dropped her husband’s hand, and set out across the dance floor.

Patrick looked after her in stupefaction. Daughters trained by the formidable Marchioness of Brandenburg did not abandon their partners on the dance floor. Mentally shaking himself, he hurried after his wife.