"Nonsense," Victoria said. "I do get lonely in this big old house, and it's a pleasure for me to have friends here. I'm thankful to Cressida for getting us all together."
"Well, of course," Cressida said. "You are all my sisters, after all—whether by birth or by marriage. I think I'm the lucky one to have a family that's so eager to spend time together."
Victoria played a card. "All right, Edwina, it's your turn."
Edwina dropped her hand. "For heaven's sake!"
Victoria laughed and picked up the coins they had been betting with. "Don't worry," she said. "We can play again."
"I think I should stop before you take all my money!"
"I'll give it back to you. This is just for fun, after all."
"Where have the gentlemen gone?" Lavinia wondered, looking around. "I've just realized I haven't seen them in ages."
"Oh, Matthew mentioned that he wanted to show the others the library," Victoria said. "It really is splendid. I was very lucky to be left in possession of such a thing when my husband died."
"You were lucky in many ways," Cressida said. "You have this whole manor to yourself now."
"That's true," Victoria agreed. "And more than enough money to see me through the rest of my life."
"Although," Edwina said, a wicked twinkle in her eye, "that's why so many among the ton suspect that you had a hand in the duke's death!"
"Edwina," Lavinia hissed. "That's hardly polite conversation."
But Victoria only laughed. "I don't care what they think," she said. "My days of needing to impress the ton are long over. All that matters now is that I have a home here with Hades and Persephone."
"I can't believe you named your cats that," Cressida said. "You realize that naming one of your cats after the lord of the underworld and the other after the woman he abducted and married doesn't make you look particularly wholesome and innocent in conversations around the death of your husband, don't you?"
"Well, I just told you that I don't care what it looks like," Victoria said. "I don't care what people think. I know the truth. I never raised a hand against him. And there's certainly no real evidence that I might have. It's all just gossip, and gossip isn't my problem. Not anymore."
"Not now that you don't feel the need to marry, you mean?"
"And why should I marry? To ensure myself a future? I have a future." Victoria waved a hand at her surroundings. "I have this beautiful home and enough money to take care of me for the rest of my life. And as for companionship, I have you, Cressida, and I have Edwina and Lavinia, and all of your husbands. There's no need for me to concern myself with marriage. Any benefit it might bring me is something I simply no longer require."
"You're not afraid an heir to the duke might appear?"
"It's been two years," Victoria said. "The duke's solicitor did warn me at the outset that someone might come and try to claim the title and the property—but no one ever has, and I can't live my life in fear of that. I don't think a new duke is going to appear now. Too much time has gone by."
"I certainly hope you're right about that," Cressida said. "I admit you've found a very good ending for yourself here at Stormwell, but if the duke had any heir at all, he could take it all away from you simply by showing up at your door one day. After all, you have no child yourself."
"And thank goodness for that," Victoria said. "Imagine if I had been left to raise the duke's child on my own."
"You don't want a child?" Lavinia asked.
"I don't wanthischild," Victoria clarified. "I don't want anything from that man—but because it allows me to fend for myself in this world, I'll accept the fact that I have his home and his money. A child would be a very different thing."
"But since you don't intend to marry, that means you'll never have a child at all," Lavinia said. "Don't you mourn that loss?"
"For a time I did," Victoria said. "But only a short time. The truth is that nobody has everything in life, and I have been very fortunate to avoid a marriage to a truly dreadful man. I don't feel as if I have anything to complain about now. I think I've been given everything I asked for."
As she said this, the three gentlemen came back into the room—Cressida's husband Matthew, the Marquess of Feverton and brother to Lavinia and Edwina, along with Lavinia's husband Seth, the Duke of Loxburgh, and Edwina's husband Allan, the Duke of Harbeck.
"Victoria, that library is really something," Seth said. "I can't believe I haven't seen it in the past two years. Why have you kept it to yourself?"
"I haven't spent much time in there either," Victoria confessed. "It was months before I went anywhere at all in the house after the duke's death."
"You still don't refer to him by his first name?"
