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Surely Stella could walk away now? Yet she didn’t want to make an enemy of Lady Lydia. Every instinct warned her that Lydia was enjoying this conversation. If the lady felt snubbed, her advice disregarded . . .

If Lydia decided to make someone’s life a nightmare?

She would do just that. An edgy malice shadowed her supposed kindness.

Stella cleared her throat. “If I change my hair color, what will happen when I am married, and my husband discovers my hair is actually red?”

“Plant an onion field,” Lydia advised. “Only you and your maid need know the truth. A lady must preserve a sense of mystery.”

“It could be that deception is essential in marriage,” Blanche said. “Certainly my parents keep secrets from each other.”

“Incidentally, did you see that the Dowager Duchess of Huntington has dyed her hair black?” Lydia asked. “A sign of mental decay, obviously. The woman is growing ever more eccentric, even though she’s been the strangest person in the ton for decades.”

“When you’re a duchess, it doesn’t matter how strange you are,” Blanche observed.

“Since you are not a duchess, Stella, you need to change more than your hair,” Lydia continued. “You’d better stop using your intelligence like a hammer, because gentlemen don’t like it.”

“Thank you for the advice,” Stella said.

“You mustn’t give up!” Blanche said encouragingly. “Your hair is pretty, even though it’s red. Look, I bought you this.”

She took a small bottle from her reticule. Stella quickly slipped her hand out of her pocket and accepted the gift.

“It will cover up your spots. I asked the apothecary for a formulation that would suit a ginger complexion.”

Stella turned the bottle over in her hands. Irrationally, the gift made tears press on the back of her eyes.

“You are really too kind, Blanche,” Lydia shrilled. Her tone was bored. The fun was over. She put a hand on her friend’s arm. “Darling, as the hostess, you must join the others. We’ll leave you here to contemplate our advice,” she said to Stella.

Which made it clear that Stella shouldn’t consider herself their friend, merely the beneficiary of kindly instruction. As if Stella would dash after the two of them, begging for more insults.

Stella watched them go, frozen as a rabbit when a fox sniffed around her burrow.

She felt sick.

It was . . . it was merely the shock of it.

She had pictured Yasmin and Silvester like Greek gods with their amber hair, their pedigrees, their easy grace. The rest of society milled below them at the foot of Mount Olympus: the ladies desiring Silvester, the men in love with Yasmin.

She had thought that the way the two of them laughed and sparkled in each other’s company was evidence that they were good.

Kind.

Decent people.

Obviously, they were not, any more than the Greek gods had been. Meanness hurt more when it came from the very top.

When the judgment came from Zeus, in short.

Lydia and Blanche joined the girls thronged around the piano, where Julia was leafing through sheet music again, still chattering about French melodies. The silence on Stella’s side of the room felt thick and musty, but she couldn’t bring herself to stand up.

At her side, the kitten rolled to her back and stretched its limbs. Stella gave her a tummy rub through her gown, desperately wishing that she was home.

“Stella!” Her aunt’s disapproving voice proceeded her. “You mustn’t sit over here by yourself.”

Stella was certain that her aunt had never been offered advice from the likes of Lady Lydia. Stella’s mother and her sisters had been noble progeny. In the family portrait, all three of them stood tall and exquisite . . .

Though now Stella thought about it, the portraitist might have improved on reality.