“I wonder where he ever got such an idea,” Letitia asked the stuffed lion innocently.
Clio rolled her eyes. “Yes, yes, enjoy your quips,” she said airily. “But I’m not about to let Aaron get all riled up and try to shoveme into some marriage of convenience to ‘save me’ from ruin. That would absolutely ruin my plans.”
“To leave London and travel the world like some kind of itinerant,” Letitia said with the weariness of someone who had had this conversation too many times.
“Your language is needlessly harsh, but you are not incorrect,” Clio agreed cheerfully enough. “You can come with me.”
She always offered this, and Letitia always gave her this same look—the doubtful one that said that she didn’t believe that Clio would ever succeed in convincing her brother to let her leave London for good.
“I do not understand why you wouldn’t just stay in Belgium,” Letitia said with a sigh. “There was nothing wrong with Brussels.”
“No, nothing was wrong with it,” Clio agreed, inspecting several dolls. Their little faces were rather alarming, weren’t they? “But I know Belgium practically as well as I know London, at this point. I want to seemore. The world is wide, and there’s so much of it that I haven’t seen.” She tried to sound lofty as she added, “Besides, I might not have a choice after today. This scandal will make me unmarriable—and that’s a good thing, too.”
That last part hadn’t sounded too hasty, had it?
“You’ve never been married, either,” Letitia pointed out with irksome reasonableness. “So wouldn’t that be a new adventure all on its own?”
Clio scoffed. That was a response enough, certainly.
Apparently not. Letitia frowned.
“I just wonder if this is what you really want,” she said gently. “How can you look at your family and their happiness and still assume that you would despise being married?”
Clio hated it when Letitia put up this argument.
“It’s different, and you know it,” she said, hoping that her confident tone would make up for what she knew was not the strongest logic she’d ever deployed. “Besides, I am scarcely a part of London Society any longer. I’ve spent so long abroad that I am practically a foreigner in my own right.”
She certainlyfeltlike a foreigner in her own home country. That was why she had made her second trip to Belgium …
“You could change things,” Letitia reminded her.
Clio couldn’t stand this conversation any longer. She pasted on her sunniest smile and tossed her hair, then echoed Gwanton’s words.
“Oh, Letty, haven’t you heard?Nobodyis good enough for me.”
Hector Ferrars, the Duke of Metford—no matter what claims his little brother made on the title—grimaced, his hand going tight around the familiar grip of his walking stick. He kept his gaze fixed on the wall of toys in front of him, trying not to show his frustration on his face.
God, these Londoners were all the same, weren’t they?
Take this vain little pet, for example. Yes, she was pretty, all long brown curls, bright eyes, and the kind of lush mouth that made a man think of Aphrodite rising from the waves.
But looks were only on the surface—and vanity rotted to the core.
Nobody is good enough for me.
The egotistical little thing.
Hector rolled his eyes and forced his attention to stay fixed on the little wooden locomotives in front of him. He’d never met his nephew, but what child wouldn’t be impressed by his own toy version of the newfangled method of transportation?
Frankly, he didn’t even know why he was here. It wasn’t as though trying to bribe his little nephew with a bauble wouldaffect how Hector was going to be received by his long-lost family. That was going to go badly, no matter what he did. And hecertainlyshouldn’t care about an overheard conversation in a shop. He should be focused on setting matters to rights within his own household, not worrying over what pampered little princesses thought about themselves, no matter how fetching.
Except, he found himself unable to resist peering over his shoulder. And, as always, the excesses of London Society crept their way into unwanted corners—in this case, in the form of the conceited chit herself coming around the corner, followed by a woman in simpler clothes. A maid, perhaps? If so, his heart went out to the other woman. There was no world in which she was paid enough to put up withthatkind of attitude.
“Oh, look, Letty!” the self-important lady exclaimed, grabbing one of the toys from the shelf. “The charming trains! Surely the children would enjoy one of these!”
In her haste, the lady didn’t seem to notice that the trains were multiple cars, held together by wooden hooks. When she grasped only the front part, the hook of the next car came loose, and it clattered to the floor, making the hook snap clean off.
“Oh my,” she said, blinking in alarm down at the broken plaything. She turned in Hector’s direction. “I’m so sorry. I’ll pay for it, of course.”
