“Boy!” Betsy called, leaning over the back of the coach, her ringlets blowing around her head as her hood fell back. “We think you should be in the circus. Come closer.”

He obeyed, which likely had something to do with the fact that young though she was, Betsy already looked and sounded like a duchess.

“Here,” she said, dropping the coin into his hands.

“Thanks!” he called up, touching his cap.

“Nicely done,” Lady Knowe said to Betsy. “I applaud you for not throwing it at the boy.”

“He wouldn’t have liked that,” Betsy said, sitting back in her seat.

When the sleigh set into motion again, Betsy leaned forward. “We have questions,” she said.

Ophelia blinked at her. “What?”

“Questions,” Alexander explained. “Like when Aunt Knowe interviewed the upstairs maid. So we can help Father make a very large decision.”

Lady Knowe coughed and looked at the children, eyes brimming with laughter. “The questions are for Lady Woolhastings, my dears. Not for Lady Astley.”

“She’s not married, so we can ask her too,” Betsy said. She folded her arms across her chest, and the two boys followed.

“But I’m not—”

“Please let them practice on you,” Lady Knowe interrupted. “I have a strong feeling that Lady Woolhastings will not entertain any questions, and they talked all the way to London about which questions were the most important.”

Ophelia looked back at the three determined faces opposite her and realized exactly what Lady Knowe wasn’t saying. These three had never had a mother. The boys in the first carriage—except for Parth, about whose parenting she knew nothing—had had Marie, and from what the duke said, she had been a loving mother.

But these three?

Everything she knew about Yvette, the second duchess, suggested that the lady spent her time in ballrooms and not nurseries.

“You may certainly practice with me,” she said, the words leaving her mouth without conscious volition. “But you must understand that your father is—your father has made a promise to wed Lady Woolhastings.”

“Wed Woolhastings,” Alexander said, grinning.

“How old are you?” Ophelia asked, smiling at him.

“Three,” he said.

“And I’m four and Leonidas is six,” Betsy said. “We have three questions, because there are three of us.”

“Please ask me when you are ready,” Ophelia said.

Alex leaned forward and stared at her intently. “Do you have fake teeth?” he asked. “Or a glass eye?”

Ophelia blinked. “No.”

“Mrs. Purdy has an elephant tooth,” he said, looking disappointed.

“From a tusk,” Lady Knowe clarified. Ophelia looked at her. The edges of the lady’s mouth had curved into a smile that she was trying hard to suppress.

“My uncle has a tooth made from a donkey bone in his jaw,” Ophelia offered. “On the bottom.”

Alex’s eyes brightened. “Can he spit it out?”

“No, because it’s wired from behind so it stays in line with his other teeth.”

“Does your uncle live with you?”