Adelaide blinked and looked at her cousin with a small smile. “I am not morose, Anna. Only fatigued. The child is a busy little body, and he is rapidly running out of room. I have refrained from confinement as long as possible, but I think I must enter it after tonight. I have no desire to see or be seen anymore. One never mentions these things, and truly they ought to. It is utterly miserable.”

Anna looked startled, turning her attention to the dancing. “Then I shall avoid the indelicate thing as long as possible. Not that I have been receiving offers of marriage or anything of the like. I may look like you, cousin, but I am not so entertaining, nor so wealthy. Even Phillip Evans deserted me.”

“Hmm.” Adelaide shook her head, taking a careful breath. “Phillip was not what he claimed to be anyway, so perhaps that is not a great loss.”

“This coming from you?” Anna scoffed delicately. “You never cared about such things before. Knowing full well that everybody has secrets, you did not care, so long as you did not know them.”

That was unfortunately true. Adelaide had been content with the superficial things in life, the more trite the better, but now…

“I have grown up, Anna,” Adelaide told her cousin in a low voice. “And have learned what truly matters.”

“So it seems.” Anna linked her arm through hers for a moment, patting her arm gently. “I like this version of you best, even when you are fatigued. Perhaps I may visit you in Cornwall after the child is born. I like the sound of Trevadden.”

Adelaide smiled a little and watched the dancing with a hint of longing, though she knew it would feel dreadful to dance in her condition. She did not wish to dance at this moment, she wished to dance in the body she’d had before all of this. The one that was not ungainly and awkward, the one that barely knew pain and could move in any direction, the one that loved to dance and did so with grace.

She wanted the energy she felt from dancing and the joy as well. The exhilaration and the light. The freedom.

Dancing that did not feel like dancing, just as it had that foggy morning in Cornwall with her husband. Where she had sprouted wings and flown to heights she had not known could exist.

She was ruined for all other dancing after dancing with Basset. And she did not mind that. He was her husband, after all, and that would not change. She would be dancing with him for the rest of her life, and that ought to bring her joy.

If she ever set eyes on him again. If he could forgive what he saw as a great offense. If they could come to an understanding and be on friendly terms again.

“I thought he was not coming. You said he was not coming.”