Page 54

“Lucky me, I found that very man,” Daisy said. A lump in her throat was making it hard to swallow.

“Don’t look like that!” Ada said. “Don’t go thinking it’s anything to do with you.”

“I’m not,” Daisy said, untruthfully.

Lust was obviously fleeting: men felt it for any woman who flounced up to them in a brothel. What man would leave a naked woman on the bed—unless he was basically uninterested in bedding her?

Miles wouldn’t have walked out on Regina, who had no resemblance to a sack of laundry.

Daisy would have loved to cry, but she couldn’t. She was holding a sleeping baby, her baby, so the horrible ache in her chest had to be suppressed. That’s what mothers did.

When she and Ada climbed out of the carriage, Frederick’s butler, Mr. Oates-Plagitt, rushed out the door. “Miss Wharton! I mean, Lady Devin.”

“Miss Wharton will do,” Daisy said quietly, trying not to wake Belle. “Is Frederick at home, Oates-Plagitt?”

“He is.”

“Sober?” She caught the butler’s expression. “Oh, not entirely,” she clarified. “But well enough to string three words together?”

“Definitely sober enough for that. He’s in the library.”

“Excellent. Can you please make sure that Ada and Belle are comfortable?” She hesitated. “I would be grateful if a maid could be assigned to care for my daughter.”

My daughter. It was the first time she had said those words outside of hers or Miles’s household.

“Certainly,” Oates-Plagitt said. “The nursery is newly refurbished. I think the young miss will be very happy there.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Was that due to Livie marrying Major FitzRoy?”

“No.” Oates-Plagitt gave her a wry smile. “Master Frederick was hopeful that you’d accept his proposal.”

“He never properly asked me.” But the truth was that she could never marry Frederick, because she’d been stupid enough to fall in love with a disinterested man. Moving to Brussels, her not-so-precious virginity intact, would be better than staying anywhere in her husband’s vicinity.

Ada deftly took the sleeping baby and followed Oates-Plagitt up the stairs to the nursery while Daisy went down the hallway to the library. She found Frederick comfortably stretched out on a sofa before the fire, his booted feet crossed over one arm and his head on the other, deep in a book. A glass of whiskey and a bowl of apples sat on the floor within easy reach of his hand.

Even miserable as she felt, the sight of her friend made her smile. “Among gentlefolk, likely you and I are the most habitually disheveled,” she observed, walking over to him.

Frederick looked up at her, brow knitted, eyes slowly focusing. “What are you doing here, dear girl? Or should I say, Lady Devin?”

It hurt to laugh. “Not for long.”

“What in the bloody hell happened?” Frederick asked. He sprang to his feet and swayed for a moment. “He figured out, didn’t he? Here, sit down.”

“Figured out what?” Daisy sank onto the couch.

“Drink this.” Frederick pushed his glass into her hand.

“I don’t like whiskey.”

“It’s apple juice. I haven’t touched it, because I hate apples.”

Daisy frowned, looking down at the bowl at their feet.

“Oates-Plagitt read in some infernal pamphlet that apples stop a man from thirsting for spirits. My personal experience is that they choke you with sweetness and do nothing for your appreciation of a fine Calvados.”

He pulled her down to sit with him. “Back to the point, dear. Devin figured out, didn’t he? I suppose he’s enraged.”

Daisy was so tired that she felt dizzy; the wedding that morning felt as if it had happened a year ago. She frowned at Frederick. “How did you know? What do you know?”