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He, too, was his mother’s least-favorite child, but by all the candle nubs in England, if he ever had children—in the very distant future—they’d not know the kind of rejection and pain he and Jemmah had experienced because of their parents’ partiality.

He’d love and treat his offspring equally as any good and decent parent should.

“Ah, Your Grace, you’re surprised to see me, I think.”

Rather than coy or seductive, her smile and winged brows indicated genuine amusement. Her vivacious eyes sparkling with secret knowledge, she ran her gaze over him, the full radiance of her smile causing something prickly to take root in his chest and purr through his veins.

“I am, but pleasantly so. Your appearance at these farces is even rarer than my own, Miss Dament.”

His by choice, but what about Jemmah?

Did she want to attend and was prohibited?

“I’m here at Aunt Theo’s insistence. Mama couldn’t put her off this time. But I’m afraid even I have too much pride to be seen in a morning gown from three seasons ago. Besides,” she lifted a milky-white, sloping shoulder as she fiddled with a pillow’s tassel, “I don’t know how to dance, and this is a ball after all.”

No self-pity or resentment weighted her words, just honest revelation.

Jules had forgotten how refreshingly forthright she was.

Still, how had such an important part of her education been overlooked?

Did Theo know?

Probably, since she’d mentioned trying to intervene on Jemmah’s behalf many times. Much to Theo’s dismay, Mrs. Dament refused all offers benefiting Jemmah, but when it came to Adelinda...

That was an entirely different matter. For that greedy puss, nothing was spared.

Pity for Jemmah engulfed him.

She unfolded—for there was no other way to describe the smooth, catlike elegance as she angled to her feet—and after sliding her obviously-mended stockinged toes into plain black slippers a trifle too large, and gathering her gloves, dipped a nimble curtsy.

“Please excuse me, Your Grace.”

“Wait, Jem.” Too forward, that. Addressing her by her given name, but she’d been Jem and he Jules for over a decade before their paths separated.

She hesitated, her pretty blue-eyed gaze probing his.

A swift glance to the mantel confirmed he might spare a minute or two more. He’d told Sabrina he’d be home no later than half past ten. Odd that he should be this happy to see Jemmah. But they were old friends, and as such, once together again, it was as if they’d never been apart.

After all, he’d known her since, as a pixyish imp with eyes too big for her thin face and wild straw-colored hair, she’d tried to hide beneath the same table as he when Lord Lockhart, his godfather had passed.

They’d seen each other intermittently over the years, but seldom traveled in the same social circles. Her father had died—heart attack in his mistress’s arms if the dark rumors were true—a year before Jules’s elder brother and sister-in-law were killed in the carriage accident that disabled Sabrina.

Jules and Jemmah had much in common.

Both had known grief and loss, endured the disdain of an uncaring mother, and lived in the shadow of an adored older child. But discovering her sequestered here, self-conscious about her unfashionable gown with salty dried tear trails upon her creamy cheeks, roused the same protective instincts he had for his niece.

What you feel for Jemmah isn’t the least paternal.

Sensation and sentiments long since dormant—so long in fact, he thought they’d died— slowly, and ever so cautiously raised their bowed heads to peek about.

Jules stepped ’round to the settee’s front and offered her a sympathetic smile.

She must’ve noticed his speculation, because she turned away and swiped at her face, erasing the evidence of her unhappiness.

“I must go. I’ll be missed.”

No. She wouldn’t.

Other than, perhaps, by Theo.

He doubted her mother or sister had given her a single thought the entire evening. Probably forgot she’d accompanied them altogether, so insignificant was she to them.

That weird spasm behind his breastbone pinged again.

Jemmah’s pale azure gaze—he couldn’t quite find anything to compare the delicate, yet arresting shade to—caught his, and she captured her plump lower lip between her teeth before shifting her focus to the frilly settee pillows.

Her shoulders lifted as she pulled in a substantial breath and notched her pert chin higher, while something akin to defiance emphasized the delicate angles and curves of her face. The earlier light he’d glimpsed in her eyes faded to a resigned melancholy. When she spoke, a kind of weary, beleaguered desperation shadowed her gentle words.

“No one, Your Grace, appreciates being the object of another’s pity.”