The following day he went back to court, and Her Highness graciously introduced him to one of her ladies-in-waiting, Lady Woolhastings, a dowager marchioness. Edith had to be fifty, far older than he.

But she didn’t look fifty; she might easily pass for forty in candlelight. She had kept her figure, and her bodices displayed her bosom’s girlish shape.

What’s more, she knew how to manage a noble household. She met his eyes with understanding of his situation; she could and would usher his daughters through the Season. Her own two daughters were happily married.

She was even nice.

She was perfect.

He wrote his sister with the news that he’d found precisely the woman whom she bade him to marry.

He escorted Edith to a concert at St. Paul’s, since she was fond of orchestral music. He wasn’t, but it didn’t matter. He met her daughters, who were unexceptional, well-mannered young women.

She suggested that he send his daughters to an elite seminary in London. “Children,” she said, “thrive in groups, and the idea that children of the nobility do best with a governess is an old-fashioned idea.” He agreed, thinking that Betsy, in particular, would enjoy school.

He decided to ask her to marry him.

He couldn’t have Ophelia, and the lady was nice enough.

Chapter Nine

When the duke sent a note the afternoon following their snowy adventure, accompanied by a bunch of exquisite hothouse posies, Ophelia asked Fiddle to have them put in a vase in the morning room, then changed her mind and brought them to her bedchamber.

Of course, Hugo wouldn’t pay her a call. It would be a waste of his time. She had refused him, roundly and without hesitation.

He needed a wife.

Still, when the snow was cleared away and Maddie appeared a few days later, full of news about the duke’s exploits around London, she felt unaccountably disappointed.

It was absurd—as absurd as the fact that she still found herself lying awake at night, her light nightdress feeling like a wool blanket, her body prickling with unusual and unwelcome desire.

After three weeks had passed, it became clear that His Grace had found his next duchess.

“Lady Woolhastings,” Maddie reported, wrinkling her nose. “Really, I would have thought he could do better. She’s so old. And so . . . Well, I do think it’s sad when a woman won’t accept her age, don’t you think? She has to be fifty-two if she’s a day and she plans to marry a man at least a decade younger.”

“May I give you another cup of tea?” Ophelia asked. She was horridly shaken, but determined not to show it. Hugo was nothing to her.

One night, one silly night.

Thank goodness, no one knew of it.