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Diantha Brown was in the music room when her life fell to pieces, scattering as surely as the playing cards she dropped when Mrs. Saunders swept in and announced that she had a caller and that his name was Mr. Hill.

“A caller?” A weak echo was all Diantha could manage as she tried and failed to stand, her legs having ceased to function properly.

A spark of hope: Perhaps her ears were similarly afflicted. Perhaps she had misheard. “I beg your pardon. What did you say the caller’s name was?”

The housekeeper frowned at the cards strewn across the gleaming parquet. Diantha followed her gaze and made eye contact with the king of hearts.

Diantha had always thought irony an overrated literary device.

“Mr. Hill,” Mrs. Saunders said.

Diantha had not misheard.

Everyone always thought she didn’t have any family, but that wasn’t true.

Well, it was partly true. She had no family by blood, but she did have one relation by marriage.

Get up, she ordered herself.

“I’ve put him in the small parlor.” Mrs. Saunders paused. “He seemed …”

He seemed as if he didn’t belong in the large drawing room in which Mrs. Saunders typically installed guests. Mrs. Saunders, who was very good at her job, had chosen correctly. If Diantha had to speak to Mr. Hill, it was better done in a small, out-of-the-way room at the back of the house.

Get up.

“Is Mr. Hill alone?” she inquired, though she wasn’t sure whom she was imagining might have accompanied him. It certainly wasn’t going to be Amalthea.

“He is.” Mrs. Saunders glanced at the dowager, who was happy this morning, absorbed in her painting. “I’ll sit with her ladyship while you receive him.”

Get up.

Diantha got up.

She always did.

Enoch Hill looked exactly the same as when Diantha last saw him, seven years ago at her sister’s wake. It was an accomplishment, in a way, considering his fondness for the drink and for stuffing his face with the cheese and butter he always said did not agree with him.

Diantha’s own countenance was vastly changed from the nineteen-year-old she had been when he’d shipped her here. But she supposed the gulf between nineteen and twenty-eight was far greater than that between forty-four and fifty-three.

“Mr. Hill.” She bobbed a stuttering curtsy—her legs were still not entirely obeying her will. “What a surprise.”

“My wife died.”

“Oh.” That set her back on her heels. “I’m so sorry.” Diantha had never met Enoch’s second wife, but she knew her to have been young.

“She died in childbirth.” He paused. “As did the child.” Another pause. “A boy.”

“Oh, Mr. Hill.” Diantha had no love for this man, but she wouldn’t wish such a tragedy on anyone. “Did you and your late wife have other children?” They’d been married six and a half years, Enoch having remarried so soon after Thea’s death it would have raised eyebrows had they been moving in polite society, so it seemed possible, even likely, there were other children.

“No. We’d been trying since our wedding night, and she never quickened until this time. It seems my curse is to wed barren, or near-barren, women. Four years with Amalthea and nearly seven with Anne, and each marriage yielded only one ill-fated pregnancy.”

Something in Diantha bristled to hear him refer to Thea as barren, though she could not argue with the fact that marriage had not produced children for her sister and Enoch.

And given that Enoch’s second marriage had taken six and a half years to do so, she was tempted to ask if perhaps the impediment was his.

She checked herself. That had been an unnecessarily cruel impulse. Enoch had wanted a son so badly. Diantha remembered many things about Enoch. Most she wished she could forget, but one happy remembrance was the day Thea told Diantha she was with child. Perhaps it will be a fresh start, Di, Thea had said. Diantha had been skeptical, but she’d kept her reservations to herself. They’d worked together to prepare Enoch’s favorite meal and, when he’d come home from the pub that night, surprised him with the news. He had smiled so widely that Diantha realized he was missing one of his front teeth. She had lived in his household for a year by that point and hadn’t known.

Diantha was always having to remind herself to be kind. She wished it were a quality that came naturally, but, alas, she had to work as hard at it today as when she was young. Happily, unlike the old days, she didn’t live under the same roof as someone who was constantly poking the bear that hibernated inside her.