After five minutes in the drawing room, however, it became delightfully clear that Lord Hugh was not yet present. And Sarah had looked. No one was going to accuse her of shirking her duty.

Sarah had never much liked standing alone at gatherings, so she joined her mother and aunts over by the fireplace. As expected, they were nattering on about the wedding. Sarah listened with half an ear; after five days at Fensmore, she could not imagine there was any detail she had not yet heard about the upcoming ceremony.

“It is a pity the hydrangeas aren’t in season,” her aunt Virginia was saying. “The ones we grow at Whipple Hill are just the shade of lavender-blue we need for the chapel.”

“It’s blue-lavender,” Aunt Maria corrected, “and you must see that hydrangeas would have been a terrible mistake.”

“A mistake?”

“The colors are far too variable,” Aunt Maria continued, “even on a cultivated shrub. You would never have been able to guarantee the shade ahead of time, and what if they did not match Honoria’s dress perfectly?”

“Surely no one would expect perfection,” Aunt Virginia replied. “Not with flowers.”

Aunt Maria sniffed. “I always expect perfection.”

“Especially from flowers,” Sarah said with a little chuckle. Aunt Maria had named her daughters Rose, Lavender, Marigold, Iris, and Daisy. Her son, whom Sarah privately thought might be the luckiest child in England, was called John.

But Aunt Maria, though generally kindhearted, had never had much of a sense of humor. She blinked a few times in Sarah’s direction before giving a little smile and saying, “Oh yes, of course.”

Sarah still wasn’t sure if Aunt Maria had got the joke. She decided not to press the matter. “Oh, look! There’s Iris!” she said, relieved to see her cousin enter the room. Sarah had never been as close to Iris as she was to Honoria, but they were all three almost the same age, and Sarah had always enjoyed Iris’s dry wit. She imagined the two of them would be spending more time together now that Honoria was getting married, especially since they shared a profound loathing for the family musicale.

“Go,” her mother said, nodding in Iris’s direction. “You don’t want to stay here with the matrons.”

She really didn’t, so with a grateful smile to her mother, Sarah made her way over to Iris, who was standing near the doorway, quite obviously looking for someone.

“Have you seen Lady Edith?” Iris asked without preamble.

“Who?”

“Lady Edith Gilchrist,” Iris clarified, referring to a young lady neither of them knew very well.

“Wasn’t she recently engaged to the Duke of Kinross?”

Iris waved this off as if the recent loss of an eligible duke was of no consequence. “Is Daisy down?” she asked.

Sarah blinked at the sudden change of subject. “Not that I have seen.”

“Thank God.”

Sarah’s eyes widened at Iris’s rather fast use of the Lord’s name, but she would never criticize. Not about Daisy.

Daisy was best in very small doses. There was simply no getting around that.