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“I’m ready.” Stella checked to make sure she had scraps of cheese in her reticule. Experimentation had proved that a bellyful of cheese sent Specs straight to sleep.

“I loathe picnics,” Mrs. Thyme moaned. “Sitting on the ground like the meanest of peasants, with ants for company. But no one can say that I haven’t done my best to find you a spouse!”

“Certainly not,” Stella murmured.

If she didn’t marry, every person in polite society would accept that her failure stemmed from spectacles, spots, and general ineptitude.

“I nearly forgot! I would never suggest lip color for Almack’s, but I think that you can risk a slight frivolity at an outdoors event without being considered fast,” her aunt said, dropping a small box on the dressing table. “I am persuaded that we must counteract the freckles with any cosmetic means possible.”

Stella wrinkled her nose. “Lip salve tastes like fish oil.” Her mouth was already too wide. Emphasizing it made her resemble a carp.

But she obediently rubbed on the crimson color.

A thimble topped with the head of a carp. Lovely.

“You needn’t worry about the flavor,” her aunt said. “Even if the Earl of Lilford asks you to marry him this afternoon, he won’t be so improper as to kiss you. But that said, stay within my eyesight at all times. A betrothed woman is at particular risk of losing her virtue.”

Stella rolled her eyes. Typical: her aunt imagined the earl overwrought with lust, whereas she had a hard time imagining Giles, as she now thought of him, kissing anyone, fishy flavor or no. To be blunt: the earl was rather stodgy.

Yet since he and Yasmin never did return to the scavenger hunt, perhaps he wasn’t as stodgy as he appeared. Last night at a musicale, Blanche had repeated a joke she overheard about Giles, Yasmin, and a four-legged frolic, after which Lydia burst into tears. Blanche had immediately apologized again. Stella found her an odd mixture of sarcastic and remorseful.

“Have you reviewed your notes?” Mrs. Thyme asked, as they walked down the stairs.

The morning after Stella had first danced with the Earl of Lilford, her aunt sent a footman out for all the newspapers, dumped them on the breakfast table, and told Stella to take notes on important topics.

After a month of regularly engaging Giles in serious conversation, Stella felt optimistic enough to idly imagine a wedding in St. Paul’s Cathedral. She would wear a long veil embroidered with gilt angels that had belonged to her mother.

Giles would wait for her at the top of the aisle, his haunted expression replaced by . . . satisfaction. Not love.

She couldn’t imagine him in love with her. But she could imagine the earl concluding that she would be a suitable countess. As long as Yasmin—

Well, as long as Yasmin actually returned home after the scavenger hunt, rather than inviting Giles to her bedchamber.

Since the Huntington residence didn’t back onto the Thames, the dowager duchess’s “riparian entertainments” were taking place in Green Park on the banks of the Tyburn. When Stella and her aunt climbed out of the carriage, they discovered two striped pink-and-white tents set up on the riverbank, shading sofas and chairs presumably transported from the ducal household.

“No blankets on the grass,” Mrs. Thyme said happily. “Be sure to remain under the tent at all times, Stella. I don’t want to see more spots on your face. And don’t remove your cloak or the sun will strike your arms.”

The duchess’s grooms had scythed the long grass on the banks of the river, so the smell of cut grass wafted toward them, along with the hum of bees and the ripple of water. The dowager duchess was sitting with her son under one tent, and the other held a cluster of guests. Laughter drifted to them on the breeze.

A quartet at the curve of the river was playing Mozart, and a butler was offering a silver tray of champagne glasses. The scene was like a watercolor that sprang to life with the smell of spring grass and the chirping of ladies.

“Very nice,” her aunt said approvingly, as they walked toward the tents. “Her Grace seems to have conceived of an elegant entertainment, for once.”

Stella ignored that; her aunt had an absurd dislike of the dowager, based on some girlhood slight. Or perhaps the fact that Her Grace obviously didn’t give a bean for Mrs. Thyme’s precious social rules.

She felt a little giddy. The tents were so pretty, and the music sounded like prisms of light glinting off river water. Hope sprang up in Stella’s heart. Perhaps this afternoon the Earl of Lilford would smile at her unreservedly.

Would offer a ring, so she could be done with courtship and the Season. It wasn’t the most romantic reason to long for a proposal, but Stella felt a passionate wish for the humiliating charade to be over.

The dowager duchess merely raised her hand as they approached, but Silvester strolled out to greet them.

His mouth curled in a way that suggested he was amused by something, hopefully not Stella’s ruff. Mrs. Thyme curtsied with a breathless titter; even matrons couldn’t resist the duke’s jaw. And the rest of him.

Stella stopped herself from an absurd impulse to arch her throat and try to look a bit taller. She and Silvester were now friends, or at least she thought they were. The cheerful grin he gave her suggested he felt the same.

It didn’t matter if a friend thought you looked like a thimble.

After Stella and her aunt had curtsied before the dowager, Her Grace motioned Mrs. Thyme to sit beside her. “Take Lady Stella to the other tent,” she told her son. “We elders will chew our cud here in peace. Oh, and give that cloak to a footman, Lady Stella. It’s likely to give you heatstroke.”