“It was pleasant,” she confessed, “but not because I felt love, or any such thing. The truth is, I enjoyed it because I did not feel invisible.”
That settled over the table with more weight than she intended. Her friends all softened at her words, for they knew how she had been raised. She was the forgotten daughter, the third one that had never seemed to sparkle as her sisters did. She was dependable, and she was there, but there was very little else to her. For once, she felt special, almost but not quite deserving.
She was not that foolish.
“He saw you,” Beatrice said quietly.
“I think so.”
“And that frightens you,” Anne said.
Margaret did not deny it. Eleanor squeezed her fingers.
“It should not.”
“It does,” Margaret replied. “Because this was never meant to matter.”
“Well, do you trust him?”
Margaret considered the question seriously. She did not want to, and given that they hardly knew one another she had good reason not to, but it was not as though she was acting within reason when it came to the Duke of Ravensmere.
“Yes.”
The answer surprised even her.
“That came from you easily.”
“I did not expect it to.”
Eleanor beamed outright, triumphant that her point had been proven.
“There. That is everything that we need to know.”
“It is not everything,” Margaret said. “It is a beginning, but that is all.”
“Of what?” Clara asked.
Margaret looked down at her tea, at the faint ripple on its surface.
“I do not know,” she admitted.
And for the first time since leaving Hyde Park, she felt the full uncertainty of it settle in her chest.
Her townhouse was quieter than the tearoom had been. The door shut behind Margaret with a soft thud, and the faint chill of the entry hall replaced the warmth of the afternoon. She had just removed her bonnet when footsteps came racing down the stairs.
“Maggie!”
Poppy nearly collided with her at the bottom step, curls escaping their pins, eyes bright with something dangerously close to triumph in the same way that Eleanor’s had been.
“You are home,” Poppy declared, as though Margaret had returned from war rather than tea.
“I believe that is evident.”
“You are yet to tell me of your promenade!”
“Did I promenade today? I believe I was merely at tea.”
Poppy groaned in frustration.
