The duchess hummed and sat forward to slide her cup onto the end table by her chair. “The mathematics themselves are a bit beyond me, I confess. But the ideas . . .” She flashed a smile. “If my grandfather keeps sending me what journals he can find, can I keep passing them along to you? I’ve so enjoyed getting to talk to someone about something other than this dratted war.”

Margot could only blink for a long moment. Surely she’d wake up and find this had been nothing but a dream. Because surely nowhere in this world did a place like this still exist. The beautiful Stafford townhouse, the tea cakes with real sugar in them, the hostess who could converse intelligently about something other than children and clothes and aide meetings. “Of course, Your Grace. I would be delighted.”

“Good. And you can call me Brook. After all”—her smile went impish—“apparently I have already proven a terrible influence on you. The ward matron has done nothing but scowl at me ever since you cut your hair. It looks lovely, by the way.”

“Oh.” Margot lifted a hand, not to touch the waves that she rather thought she’d mastered creating by now, but to motion the compliment away. “It was more for a point than for fashion. I don’t much care whether I’m in vogue.”

Brook opened her mouth but got out no reply before there came a genuine cacophony from the entryway. Doors opening, closing, the butler’s shuffle, and what sounded like a dozen—or perhaps two—enthusiastic little voices calling out, “Maman! Maman! Tu ne devines jamais ce que on a fait!”

Instantly the duchess’s face lit, and she leaned forward with her arms outstretched for the miniature people who came barreling into the room. Boys, apparently. The larger probably around five, the smaller perhaps three. They were dressed similarly in short trousers and knee socks, the caps that matched their jackets both askew as they hurled themselves into their mother’s arms.

“What did you do?” Brook asked in response to her boys’ claim that she would never guess. “Grandpapa didn’t take you to the sweets shop again, did he?”

“I learned my lesson after you left me with them last time.”

Margot turned her head to see a full-sized person following the boys at a more sedate pace. A gentleman, obviously, and presumably either the duchess’s father or father-in-law. He wore a small smile that seemed perfectly at home in the corners of his mouth and a jacket with four gleaming black buttons, and he’d taken five steps into the room before he seemed to notice that it held someone other than his grandchildren and their mother. But when he looked over at Margot, it was with a ready smile.

“The zoo!” the bigger of the little ones exclaimed, switching without any seeming thought from French to English.