Ophelia couldn’t think of a single duke with whom she would want to share more than a minuet, but she was reconciled to her own shortcomings. The rest of the world experienced fiery passion, but she didn’t. Thankfully, she and Peter had been alike in that.

“I would probably follow him to Paris after a mere nod,” Maddie said dreamily.

“Which duke?” Ophelia asked, but Maddie didn’t hear because she was gawking across the room like a pig herder seeing St. Paul’s for the first time. Ophelia snapped shut her fan, thinking that she probably shouldn’t compare a beddable duke to a cathedral. It seemed vaguely blasphemous.

Maddie blinked and came out of her desirous haze. “Are you going to the retiring room? I shall join you. I didn’t see that darling bag earlier. Oh! It matches your gloves!”

Ophelia smiled. Both her gloves and bag were made of thin, butter-soft leather, sewn with small spangles. The gloves glittered above her wrists, and her bag sparkled from every angle as it moved with her. “Thank you! A gift from my mother-in-law.”

“You’re so lucky,” Maddie began, and broke off the sentence. “He’s just over there!”

“Who?” Ophelia turned her head, but all she saw was a ballroom crowded with people she’d known her entire life.

“The Duke of Lindow, of course,” Maddie said triumphantly, plucking Ophelia’s sleeve and nodding toward the door. “Tell me you wouldn’t have an affaire with him.”

Ophelia wrinkled her nose. “I’ve heard of him, but we’ve never met.” She didn’t bother to look again, because she had no interest in that particular duke, given his unsavory reputation.

Not that it was his fault that his wife ran away with a Prussian.

Maddie was on her toes, peeking over the crowd. “He’s just so beautiful,” she breathed. “It’s cruel what happened to him.”

“Darling, I’m not going to the retiring room; I’m going to leave,” Ophelia said, making up her mind. “Otherwise I’ll be trapped in the supper dance and I shan’t return home for ages. Viola wakes up at five in the morning and—”

“You are so unnatural,” her cousin interrupted, momentarily startled out of her examination of the infamous duke. “You mean to tell me that you actually rise with that child?”

“She comes to fetch me,” Ophelia said apologetically. The truth was that she was often awake before the patter of unsteady feet came down the corridor. She lay in bed, smiling at the ceiling, waiting for Viola to burst through the door.

Viola babbled incomprehensibly all the way from the nursery, but as soon as she came through the door, she would cry, “Mama!” She knew only a few words, but “Mama” and “no” were her favorites, and she shouted them both with great enthusiasm.