The trustees of the entailment were presently limiting funds until it was known if she carried an heir. Apparently, they didn’t want her absconding with what they didn’t consider legally hers. “If anyone learns of this—”

“No one is going to learn of it,” he said impatiently. “Only you and I know you are not presently with child. Only you and I know you will rectify that within the next week or so. As long as your lover doesn’t realize your womb was empty when you came to him . . . and if he does suspect, it will be his word against ours. Who will give any credence to the ramblings of a commoner? You did go with a commoner, didn’t you?”

She nodded. Unfortunately, she’d chosen a very smart and clever one.

“I do hope it wasn’t too unpleasant for you. It may take more than once, you know.”

“I’m well aware.”

He suddenly appeared uncomfortable, the first time he’d seemed so since he’d cooked up this scheme. “Take strength from the fact that we’re doing this for the girls.”

The girls. Her three sisters. The twins, who were eighteen, and Alice, who was sixteen. She wanted them to have the choice she’d never had, wanted them to be able to marry for love.

She glanced down at her hands, surprised to find them knotted so tightly in her lap. “What if I’m barren?” The words were barely a whisper, but the fear had dogged her heels for some years now. Her husband had frequented her bed less often as their efforts failed to get her with child. The last few months, he’d not come to her at all.

“Mother wasn’t. She gave birth to seven children.”

Although two had died in infancy. They had come after Selena was born and before the twins, which was the reason so many years separated Selena from her sisters. “I’m not certain that a vibrant womb is handed down from one generation to the next.”

“The fault could have rested with him. It’s not as though his family tree is teeming with descendants, at least not on his father’s side. Which is the reason you are now in a position to lose everything—or ensure that you hold on to it.”

By passing another man’s child off as Lushing’s. The deception didn’t sit well with her, but their resources and recourses were so limited.

“Was the club as decadent as Torie claims?” She was taken aback by his abrupt change in topic and the way his eagerness to know the truth of the establishment and his hope of its titillating nature reverberated through his voice. Torie, his mistress, had told him of the place, having apparently visited while Winslow was away in the country.