“Me, me, I want to go too,” Pippa shouted enthusiastically.

“But, sweetheart, I think Katie needs her hair attended to,” Charlotte said to Pippa, who scooted over and picked up her comb, torn between the idea of tea downstairs with Lady Sophie and practicing the beloved art of hair design.

“Now do look at that gown, Lady Pippa!” said the girls’ nanny.

Pippa looked down inquiringly and carefully straightened out a few of the creases. “Well, I was careful, at first, Katie. Then I forgot.”

“Oh my goodness,” Katie exclaimed. “There’s me with my hair all a mess, and I didn’t even know it! Thank goodness Lady Pippa is here to help.” She sat down and plucked off her cap, and Pippa began carefully pulling pins from the smooth coil of Katie’s hair.

Sophie stooped and rubbed noses with the little sprite. “May I borrow you for an afternoon soon? We’ll have ices, and you can tell me how a lady goes along. It will be good practice for when Sarah needs your help.”

“All right, Lady Sophie,” Pippa said happily. “Papa says ices are my vice. Do you know what that means?”

“It means that you like ices very, very much.”

“What’s your vice, Aunt Sophie?” Pippa’s black eyes looked at Sophie inquiringly, her beautifully arched eyebrows the picture of her father’s—and her uncle’s.

The wish for a little girl who looks just like you, Sophie thought, unbidden. And everything that might lead to that wish.

“She shares your vices, Pippa.” Charlotte’s voice came from the door. “Sophie wishes for ices, and that’s enough of vices!”

“Vice … ice … mice!” little Pippa shouted, waving her silver comb.

With a final wave Sophie slipped from the room, following Charlotte’s slim figure down the stairs to the countess’s sitting room on the first floor.

The minute Charlotte was inside the door she dropped into a rocking chair by the fireplace and arranged her loose morning gown so that she could nurse Sarah. Sophie wandered restlessly around the sitting room, a room entirely without the manicured formality of the majority of ladies’ sitting rooms. Of course, this wasn’t where Charlotte did her real work—she had a painting studio on the third floor—but the rose sitting room was the center of their family life. It was a warm room that tolerated a certain tumbling of books on the shelves and an occasional litter of papers by the fireside. It also tolerated the unprecedented affront of a mistress, a countess, who nursed her own child and without retiring to the darkest recesses of her bedchamber to do it.

Finally Charlotte looked up, bright eyes expectant.

“Well?”

Sophie had been watching wistfully as Sarah snuggled against her mother’s breast, one small fist clutching a stray piece of bodice lace.

“Well …” Sophie repeated teasingly. “I jilted Brad-don.”