“I will be patient then.” Although patience wasn’t her strong suit. She did not sit idle during her days. She certainly did not spend her days working on her needlepoint or as a companion to ladies of mature years. But that’s what she would be doing as she waited for the duchess to get sick again.

“I’m sure she appreciates your company. She is accustomed to a vigorous social life. That has changed since she lost her sons and since the onset of this infirmity.”

They descended the stairs.

“Has anyone thought whether her affliction has to do with the grief of losing her sons?”

“Possible, I suppose. I did wonder, but the timing does not seem significant. Her pains started before the death of her sons, after all. And when her grief was the most intense after losing Winston she was not afflicted during that time at all.”

Her grief did not appear to be a trigger for her condition then.

They stopped before the drawing room doors. “Ready?”

She turned to face him. “It’s just a dinner party,” she said as though she attended dinner parties with nobles all the time and not just with her sisters and Warrington, the world’s most unnoble noble. She had never felt any pressure or anxiety in Warrington’s company.

This dinner, she suspected, would be different.

She would be dining with a duke and a duchess who fully acted the part. At least her day with the duchess had made her more comfortable in that august lady’s company. The duke was another story. She had scarcely spent any time with him, but she did not think he took her very seriously. Actually, she doubted that he took her any way at all. He was a man at the top of his world. She was merely a female, and not one of particular note as she was without rank or wealth or name or great beauty.

She knew from Bea, who had proven herself to be quite the fount of information, that Lady Elise would be in the company of her aunt, the Dowager Marchioness of Cheswick. The other guests would be the duke and duchess’s dear friends, the Baron and Baroness Loftin.

It was a strange thing to consider that she would be the only one at the table who was of humble origins. Even Sinclair. He might be a mister right now, but he was the Birchwood heir. That was his destiny. No one would ever look at him or treat him as a plain mister again. He was more, better as far as the rest of the world was concerned.

He held the door for her and waved her within to the “just a dinner party” that waited.

Chapter 12

Lady Elise was as lovely as purported to be. The Birchwood staff had not exaggerated that fact to Bea.