“She should be told again. Some compliments bear repeating.” Letitia reached for her wine. “I have attended many dinners this Season, and none of them produced a sauce of that quality. Lord Penistone had the pretension to serve something he called a reduction, which was simply a smaller amount of something that had already been insufficient.”
“You went to Lord Penistone’s dinner?”
“I did.”
“You said in April that you would rather eat at the coaching inn than attend another of Lord Penistone’s dinners.”
“The coaching inn is genuinely quite good,” Letitia said. “I stand by both positions. They are not contradictory.”
James looked across the table at Isadora. She was tracing the stem of her glass with one finger, her mouth set in the curve that meant she was enjoying something and declining to show it fully.
She caught him looking.
Warmth spread through her chest at the small exchange.
“I want to propose a toast,” Letitia announced when the dessert plates had been cleared. “Which—William, please do not make that face.”
“I am not making any face.”
“Anyway, I propose toasts when the occasion merits them. This occasion merits one.” She lifted her glass. “To Ashbourne, which was a cold and rather echoing place when Izzy first came to it, and is now—” She looked around the table, at James and Isadora. “Something else entirely. Something considerably better.” She paused. “And to my sister, who came here thinking she was solving a problem and ended up building a home. Which anyone who knows her will understand is entirely typical, because she does everything properly, even the things she did not plan to do.”
“Letitia,” Isadora laughed softly.
“I am not finished.” Letitia fixed James with a frank look. “And to you, James, whom I spent many years finding insufferable?—”
“Letitia.” James clutched his chest.
“—and who turned out to deserve my sister.” She said it simply, without hedging. “Which is a higher bar than you might think and which you have cleared adequately.”
“Adequately,” James scoffed.
“I said what I said.” She raised her glass. “To Ashbourne, and to the people who made it what it is.”
They all raised their glasses.
James looked at Isadora. She was already looking at him.
Something passed between them. It was the silent conversation of two people who had discussed something and were now deciding whether it was the right moment to announce it.
He raised his eyebrows slightly, and she gave a small nod.
“Actually,” he said, setting his glass down, “since we are proposing toasts, there is something Isadora and I would like to say.”
The table went very still.
“Something,” Letitia repeated, with intense focus. “What kind of something?”
“We are expecting a child,” James announced.
He said it simply, with the warmth of someone who had been saying it privately and had been looking forward to saying it in this room, to these people, with Isadora beside him.
The silence lasted perhaps two seconds. Then Letitia made a sound that was not quite a word and was definitely not composed. She rose from her seat, rounded the table, and embraced Isadora before anyone else had entirely processed what had been said.
“A baby,” she squealed into her shoulder. “Another baby.”
“Yes,” Isadora said.
“Your baby.”
