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From some angles, her aunt seemed to have no chin, as if her face simply got tired and turned into her neck. Presumably Stella’s mother had used a lorgnette to identify her dance partners, since she had been as nearsighted as Stella, but there was no sign of it in the family portrait.

Nodding to her aunt, Stella casually draped her right hand so as to disguise the kitten.

“What did those girls say to you?” Mrs. Thyme asked, sitting down, her eyes narrowing.

Stella cleared her throat. “Lady Lydia and Miss Boodle told me . . . gave me some guidance about how to better present myself. Miss Boodle gave me this.”

“Pear’s White Imperial Powder.” Her aunt’s suspicion turned to happiness. “How kind of her! That’s just what I would have suggested, dear, if only you’d been amenable.”

“If I wear that, the man I marry will think I don’t have freckles. What happens on our wedding night?” Stella asked. “Or the following morning, if I wash my face after he retires to bed? I have them all over my body.”

Mrs. Thyme turned visibly pink. “Really, dear, that’s not an appropriate question! I am surprised that you even had such a thought.”

“Well, I have,” Stella said bluntly. “I can’t imagine a man would be very happy to wake up to a wife covered with freckles he never imagined existed.”

Mrs. Thyme sighed. “Marriage is shocking on so many fronts. Believe me, freckles are the least of it.”

“Then why does everyone make such a fuss about them?”

“Fine, clear skin gives assurance of the inherent residence of three admirable graces to beauty,” her aunt said promptly. “Wholesomeness, Neatness, and Cheerfulness. You have all those qualities, of course.”

Stella didn’t think she was very cheerful. And she wasn’t sure about wholesome either. Wholesome ladies didn’t fantasize about horrid dukes. Not that she would ever do that again.

“It’s not just about freckles. People feel you aren’t trying,” her aunt added.

“The Duke of Huntington doesn’t try.” She spit that out, a rough truth that plopped into the space between them.

“He’s a man.”

“Lady Yasmin doesn’t—”

Mrs. Thyme raised her hand. “Lady Yasmin is effortlessly charming, but her costumes? Her French gowns and dampened petticoats? Her lip color? I’m not convinced her hair is natural. I expect she uses lemons to lighten it.”

Stella didn’t agree. Yasmin’s hair was a tarnished gold color, like a lantern burning low. One couldn’t get that by soaking one’s head in boiled onions, or lemons either.

“I promised Lady Boodle that you would sing for us,” her aunt said. “In French, of course.”

“Oh, I wish you hadn’t,” Stella said.

“Some guests here today have sons, Stella,” her aunt said firmly. “You must put your best foot forward.” Her aunt and uncle had hired numerous music masters when it became clear that singing was among Stella’s few ladylike graces.

“I am trying,” Stella said.

Mrs. Thyme lowered her voice. “I warrant your accent is fifty times better than Julia Fitzwilliams’s. I hardly remember a word of the language, but I know that ‘amour’ shouldn’t rhyme with ‘bower.’”

Chapter Six

Mrs. Thyme towed Stella across the room to the pianoforte, scattering girls to both sides. “My niece will now sing to us in French,” she said loudly. “She has an excellent voice.”

Lydia snickered and said, “A family trait.”

Stella frowned at her, because no matter how wary she was of Lydia, her aunt and uncle had taken her in without complaint when her parents died. They didn’t love her, not the way they would have loved a child of their own, but they had done their best with the cuckoo that landed in their nest.

She managed to position herself in such a way that her right leg and its lumpy pocket were sheltered by the pianoforte. Since there was no escaping a performance, she took off her spectacles so that she didn’t have to see her audience.

She chose to sing a French ballad about the moon. It was sad, and she felt sad. But also it showed the range of her voice, just in case some gentleman wanted a soloist along with a dowry.

Her voice filled the drawing room with all the confidence she never felt when she was dancing or holding a teacup or the hundred other things that required knowing precisely where one was in space.