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“Now I am fortunate enough to have access to quite the library,” she went on. “The new countess is a lover of novels, and I visit bookshops and lending libraries. So I don’t do as much rereading as I used to. But I suppose I have kept up my note habit.”

Mrs. Saunders appeared with a fresh pot of tea. Miss Brown poured a cup for the dowager, who said, “Three sugars, please.”

“Oh, you’ve quite the sweet tooth, it would seem,” Miss Brown said warmly, as if she didn’t already know how Lady Harcourt took her tea, as if she hadn’t doctored hundreds, if not thousands, of cups to her specifications.

“I admit I do.”

“I have never seen you take your tea with anything less than three sugars,” Simon said fondly.

“Oh, have you seen me take tea? Have we met before?”

“Yes, I am Simon,” he said. “Earl of Marsden, but Simon to you. I am a longstanding friend of your son, Archie.”

“And have you met my mother?” the dowager said, gesturing to Miss Brown.

Oh, dear. When he arrived, Simon had noted that the dowager wasn’t mistaking Miss Brown for her own mother, something she had been prone to doing of late. He was about to issue a correction, but Miss Brown shook her head ever so slightly and said, “Lord Marsden, before you arrived, Lady Harcourt and I were reminiscing about how utterly she enchanted society with her singing voice in her youth.”

“I am not so terribly old, now, Mother!” the dowager protested.

“Well, neither of us is getting any younger!” Miss Brown exclaimed, and the two of them shared a laugh.

Simon had always thought Miss Brown’s eyes quite striking. He had never seen her laugh before, though, at least not up close. When she did, little wrinkles appeared at the corners of her eyes, and they somehow bracketed those startlingly dark-blue irises in a way that was … inexplicably pleasing.

“I will never catch up with you, though!” the dowager said gaily.

“That’s true,” Miss Brown said.

Simon marveled at what a deft touch Miss Brown had with Lady Harcourt. How, although she was, in a way, deceiving the older woman, she was also being very, very kind.

Two truths that should be opposed, held simultaneously.

Simon wondered if it was time to go. He had come in search of pardon, and perhaps that private, amused glance earlier had been such, or as close as he was like to get. It was just that he was worried about this business of a forced marriage—or the perception of one. Surely she could say no, and that would be the end of it?

“We were trying to remember the words to a song before you arrived,” Miss Brown said.

“Yes,” Lady Harcourt said, “and we only have some of them.” She sang her next sentence out loud, in a high, clear soprano. “‘Of all the girls that are so smart, there’s none like pretty Sally.’ That is all we can recall. Do you know the next line?”

“I do not, but it must rhyme with Sally, mustn’t it?” He tried, “‘I walked down from the hill to visit her in the valley’?”

“Oh, that’s a good one!” Miss Brown exclaimed, and she seemed to mean it. “We’ve been trying to conjure a second line, but our attempts have been quite a bit more outlandish.”

“Yes, we rhymed ‘Sally’ with ‘magically,’” the dowager said wryly.

“Let’s hear it,” he said.

“‘Of all the girls that are so smart, there’s none like pretty Sally. For her to take my hand I’d have to be magically …” The dowager paused for effect and added, “‘Inclined.’”

They all laughed.

“That last word doesn’t belong.” She turned to Miss Brown. “Sing him the other one.”

“Oh, I couldn’t. I have nowhere near the voice you do.”

“Well, that’s true.”

Miss Brown and Simon shared an amused glance. He was reminded of a conversation he’d had with Archie recently, in which Archie had recounted some advice Miss Brown had given him regarding his mother. While it was understandable to mourn the woman they had lost, if one endeavored to be fully present with the woman she was, one might be surprised at how satisfying her company could be.

Simon joined the dowager in exhorting Miss Brown to sing, and when she relented, he was treated to a smoky alto rendition of Sally’s fate: “‘Of all the girls that are so smart, there’s none like pretty Sally. But Sally does not like me, so she dresses very drably.’”