“Perhaps,” Iris said. She sighed, glancing down at her own belly. She was going to have to start padding herself soon. The only reason she had not yet done so were the three hundred miles between Yorkshire and London. Ladies were not quite so relentlessly fashionable here, and she could get away with wearing last year’s frocks. Waistlines were dropping in the capital; the forgiving billows of the Regency style were giving way to something far more structured and uncomfortable. By 1840, Iris predicted, women would be corseted into nothingness.

They walked on for a few quiet moments, then Marie-Claire said, “Well, I’m thanking you.”

“You’re welcome,” Iris said again, this time turning to Marie-Claire with a small, rueful smile. The younger girl was trying. The least she could do was be gracious.

“I know that Fleur says she wants to be a mother,” Marie-Claire went on blithely, “but it’s really quite selfish of her. Do you know she has not apologized to me even once?”

“To you?” Iris murmured. Because really, she rather thought she deserved one first.

“She’ll ruin me,” Marie-Claire said. “You know she will. If you weren’t doing what you’re doing—”

Doing what you’re doing, Iris thought. What a lovely euphemism.

“—and she went ahead and had this baby out of wedlock, no one would have me.” Marie-Claire turned to Iris with an expression that was almost belligerent. “You’ll probably say I’m being selfish, but you know it’s true.”

“I know,” Iris said quietly. Perhaps if Richard gave Marie-Claire a season in London . . . They could probably find someone for her, someone who lived far from this corner of Yorkshire. Gossip traveled, but usually not that far.

“It’s so unfair. She makes a mistake, and I’m the one who would have to pay the price.”

“I hardly think she would find herself getting off scot-free,” Iris pointed out.

Marie-Claire pressed her lips together impatiently. “Yes, well, she would deserve it, not me.”

It was not the most becoming of attitudes, but Iris had to admit that Marie-Claire had a point.

“Trust me when I tell you there are girls here who are just dying for a reason to cut me.” Marie-Claire sighed, and a little bit of bravado seemed to seep out of her. She looked over at Iris with a slightly forlorn expression. “Do you know girls like that?”

“Quite a few,” Iris admitted.

They walked about ten more paces, and then Marie-Claire suddenly said, “I suppose I can forgive her a little.”

“A little?” Iris had always thought that forgiveness was an all-or-nothing sort of thing.

“I’m not completely unreasonable,” Marie-Claire said with a sniff. “I do recognize that she’s in a difficult situation. After all, it’s not as if she can marry the father.”