“Miss Wychwood!” Mrs. Major’s tone held an unmistakable warning. “This is not to be borne. If you cannot cease prattling on about subjects that you plainly do not understand, then you will be silent.”

Julia’s mouth clamped shut. She wanted to argue. To raise her voice, even. But Mrs. Major wasn’t her enemy. She was here at the request of Mama and Papa, doing their bidding, keeping Julia in line as strictly as if she were an army captain herself. Marching her straight into the arms of the Earl of Gresham.

And it wasn’t only Mrs. Major.

Back in her bedchamber at Belgrave Square, clad in a thick cotton nightgown that covered her from her neck to her toes, Julia sat in front of her dressing table as Mary briskly brushed her hair.

“Captain Blunt?” Mary’s nose scrunched in thought. “Not him with the country house full of by-blows?”

“Not a houseful,” Julia said. “There are only three of them. Two boys and a little girl.”

“Only three, she says.” Mary clucked her tongue. “You listen to me, miss. You forget Captain Blunt and marry that earl of yours. You’ll be a grand lady. A countess. Isn’t that worth a minute or two of discomfort each night?”

Julia caught Mary’s eyes in the trifold looking glass. “What discomfort?”

Mary gathered the bulk of Julia’s hair in her hand and brushed the ends of it. “That’s for your mama to tell you. But I’ll say this, it’s a small price to pay for your own coach, fine gowns, and a grand house in town. The Countess of Gresham. I like how that sounds. To think, I could be your maid. Me, lady’s maid to a countess!”

“He hasn’t even asked me yet,” Julia said. “And there’s more to life than coaches and gowns.”

“Easy to say when you’ve never gone without them.”

Julia privately acknowledged the truth of it. Her world was exceedingly small, all of it reduced to one suffocating section of fashionable London. A cage, indeed, but a gilded one. “I must sound very ungrateful to you.”

“You sound young is how you sound,” Mary said. “You take my advice. You marry his lordship. A fine life you’ll have, presiding over balls and dinner parties, and having all the papers write about what you’re wearing.”

“It sounds dreadful. I’ve never wanted— Ouch!”

Mary raked the silver-plated brush through a thorny tangle in Julia’s hair. “Beg pardon, miss, but what you want isn’t the point. The earl’s an old man. He’ll leave you a widow soon enough. You can retire to the country then, and read all the novels you like.”

Julia gave her outspoken maid an injured look. “Really, Mary. I would think it a sad thing if my happiness must depend on anyone dying.”

“Most ladies’ happiness does.” Setting aside the hairbrush, Mary proceeded to twist Julia’s long hair into its nighttime plait. “There’s no woman better off than a widow. That’s what me mum always says.”

Julia stood, reaching back to take charge of her plait. She drew it over her shoulder, swiftly finishing it and securing the ends with a scrap of purple satin ribbon. “I daresay she’s right, but what of all the peril that exists in the years between marriage and widowhood?”