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Tears threatened. How could she leave them?

But what other choice did she have? It was leave them, or publicly humiliate them.

“I would be quite happy to hear your sister’s remedy,” young Lady Harcourt said, drawing Diantha from her thoughts.

“It would be something I’d show you, rather than tell you. May I take your arm?”

“Please do.”

“It is something my sister’s midwife showed her.” She turned Lady Harcourt’s arm over in her lap and searched for the spot on her wrist. “She said when nausea threatened, to apply pressure here. It did used to provide relief. You can do it yourself, of course, one side at a time, but she found it more effective if I did it for her, both sides at once.”

“Thank you, Miss Brown. I am feeling well at the moment—it must be the sparkling company—but I shall try it at the earliest opportunity.”

“You may find,” the dowager said, “that you will feel better soon. For many ladies, the illness does go away after the first few months.”

“So I have heard, and so I hope,” young Lady Harcourt said. She turned to Diantha with a knowing, borderline censorious expression. “Now, I would like to discuss a very important topic.”

Dread flooded Diantha’s gut. Did she know?

No. How could she? That would only be possible had Lord Marsden told Lord Harcourt Diantha’s secret. And he didn’t even know the most incriminating part. More to the point, he wouldn’t have betrayed her confidence. He was an obelisk, upright and infallible.

“I understand that you are in possession of a copy of Frankenstein,” the countess said. “I understand that it is quite the thrilling story.”

“Oh!” Diantha laughed, thankful the ladies would not know it was mostly out of relief. She had entertained the notion that young Lady Harcourt was onto her about Lord Marsden, but she was only onto her about Frankenstein. “Yes! And yes, it is quite thrilling. But also heartbreaking. And wise. And cautionary.”

“I wholeheartedly agree,” Lady Stonely said. “And did you know that Mrs. Shelley reportedly wrote it on a dare? She and Percy, who I hasten to add was not yet her husband, were holidaying with Lord Byron, and Byron reportedly suggested they attempt to pen ghost stories. I don’t know that it was framed as a competition, but if it was, I think we can agree who came out of it the victor.”

“Miss Brown,” the younger Lady Harcourt said, “you know how fond I am of Gothic novels. I fail to see why you haven’t lent this book to me!” She spoke with mock admonishment. “I trust you will do so now.”

“I cannot. I have lent it to … someone else.” Before anyone could ask who—though she reminded herself that she often lent novels to Lord Marsden in company, when he called on the family, and no one had said a word about it—she added, “But of course I shall give it to you as soon as I have it back.”

“What is the book about?” the elder Lady Harcourt asked, and Diantha didn’t point out that Lord Marsden had read at least some of it to her the other morning. Since he hadn’t given it back, she had been assuming he planned to continue the exercise.

“It is rather gruesome.” She hesitated to recount its plot. A few sentences would make it sound more sensational, and scandalous, than it was.

“It is about a doctor who brings to life a creature made of cadaver parts,” Lady Stonely, apparently not possessed of any of Diantha’s circumspection, said mildly. “And then the monster ruins the doctor’s life. In a nutshell.”

“That sounds familiar,” Lady Harcourt said. “And a lady wrote this book, you say? On what sounds like a dare?”

“Yes,” Lady Stonely said. “It was written by Mary Shelley, wife of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.”

“Though perhaps we ought to refer to him as Percy Bysshe, husband of the novelist Mary Shelley,” Miss Morgan said, and everyone laughed.

“You see?” the dowager said. “Ladies are a great deal more fun than gentlemen.”

Dinner passed uneventfully but pleasantly, and as the group rose to move to the drawing room where evenings were spent, Miss Morgan took Diantha’s arm. “Miss Brown, I want to hear all about your immersion under the stars last night. I didn’t get a chance to ask you about it this afternoon.”

And indeed, they hadn’t spoken, beyond brief whispers, when Diantha arrived in her room last night, damp and invigorated, to relieve Miss Morgan from her post watching over Lady Harcourt.

“All these happy couples,” Miss Morgan whispered as they watched everyone sit—they were trailing a bit behind the crowd. “I find it exceedingly disagreeable.”

Diantha giggled.

When was the last time that had happened? She was slightly taken aback.

“I am pleased to have found a friend in you on this trip,” Miss Morgan said. “I had thought I would be lonely, what with everyone paired off.”

“Well, there is Lord Marsden.” Diantha observed him taking his seat apart from the larger group. He had, as per usual, brought a book with him. Diantha herself had sat there more than once, carrying on a semiprivate conversation with him. But it was not to be this evening, for Miss Morgan was steering her toward a settee on the other side of the room.