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The dowager nodded, her eyes crinkling. “Your father and I went to Venice back in ’97. The watermen push long boats called gondolas. Their hats were trailing ribbons of red, green, and white, celebrating their new flag. Your father . . .” Her voice trailed off. “The watermen sing. I thought the ducks would be a good substitute.”

Stella thought that was rather sad, but sweet.

The birds had stopped swimming and were milling about.

“Come over here,” the duchess bellowed at them, waving her walking stick in the air.

“I’m afraid that ducks don’t speak English,” Stella said.

“I’m afraid they’re hungry,” Silvester said.

Sure enough, the birds paused just long enough to munch their hats before they indignantly sailed on down the stream, quacking an unlyrical, outraged chorus.

The following silence was broken by Yasmin’s peals of laughter. She was standing on the edge of the river, hanging on to Silvester, risking a short but steep drop-off into shallow water.

Stella had to repress a nasty spasm of envy. Yasmin touched Silvester so easily and vice versa. One of his broad hands was holding her, his fingers curling around her delicate waist.

She didn’t have to look down at her waist to know that his fingers wouldn’t wrap around her the same way.

“Are you very disappointed by those greedy fowls?” Silvester called to his mother.

“How dare they eat their costumes!” the dowager grumped. “I wanted a hat as a keepsake. Someone fetch a groom to haul me back up the slope to the tent.”

Merry was already walking back toward the tents with Harold.

“No, look,” Stella called, pointing at the river. One duck was paddling toward them, her hat intact.

“I want that hat. Bread!” the dowager commanded her son.

Silvester nodded and started up the bank.

“You’re going to topple,” Giles called to Yasmin, sounding exasperated. Without a backward glance at Stella, he strode to the river’s edge.

Though the earl didn’t touch Yasmin as improperly as had Silvester and, in fact, merely touched her shoulder to direct her to back away from the water, Stella was struck by the idea that there was something even more intimate in the way they looked at each other.

She began sorting through her impressions of the afternoon: Lydia’s sharp eyes, with that disconcerting sizzle of possessiveness toward her brother. Yasmin blurting out Giles’s first name. Harold, enthralled by his laughing gas salon, ignoring Merry’s claim that the “very best” people would not sniff gas in public. Silvester, balanced on the riverbank, adoring his golden Cleopatra. Yasmin next to him, smiling kindly.

The expression in Yasmin’s eyes when she looked at Giles.

And then Stella.

The thimble, awkward and short. Standing apart from the rest, as if separated by a pane of glass, except for the rare moments when she and Silvester got into an argument. The realization made her feel invisible, like a puff of air that drifts through a room unnoticed.

Suddenly Stella realized that if she married Giles, she would spend her entire life on the wrong side of the window, watching two men in love with one adorable woman.

Of course, she could remove her spectacles. Paint her face every day to conceal her freckles. Put on the kind of stays that hoisted one’s breasts into the air paired with a gown that exposed her bosom.

She could chirp and giggle.

But—she didn’t want to.

And she highly doubted that the disguise would somehow, miraculously, make her “adorable.”

Silvester returned with a piece of toast, which he gave to his mother. As Stella watched, a glaring match between Giles and Silvester resulted in Silvester escorting Yasmin to the tent.

Giles turned to Stella, but she shook her head, wanting nothing to do with either of Yasmin’s suitors. “I’ll wait for the dowager duchess.” When he looked as if he might (reluctantly) remain at the shore, she waved him back up the bank.

Her Grace was tossing crumbs into the river. The solitary remaining duck paddled closer, hat tipped at an outlandish angle because she kept bobbing her neck to pick up the toast.