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A silence, then: “For my sins, I’d probably have said yes to anything you asked, Daisy.”

She rubbed her head against his shoulder. “My mother told me it was a mistake not to confess the truth before we married. But before this happened, he was indifferent, and I was so infatuated … He wouldn’t have married me if I had told the truth.”

“I’m not so sure about that.”

“Can you please send your butler out to buy myself and my maid passage on the first boat leaving for Brussels? I can’t be faced by all that despisement whenever I glimpse Miles in passing. Is despisement a word?”

Frederick shook his head. “No, but I see what you mean.”

“I expect Regina will scoop him up. I expect she never bothers to lie, so she will make an excellent Lady Devin.”

“She has no need to lie. She simply wields her opinions like a bludgeon. No one dares to contradict her.”

Exhaustion weighed so heavily on Daisy that she could hardly keep her eyes open. “It’s been the most wretched day,” she said with a sigh. “Not precisely the wedding day I dreamed about when I was a little girl.”

Frederick kissed her head again; this time she heard the small sound. “I suppose your imaginary groom was infatuated?”

“Desperate with love,” Daisy confirmed. “I pictured myself taller and thinner. I would drift up the cathedral aisle, looking so beautiful that he would spring up in his eyes.” She shook her head. “I was foolish then and foolish now.”

“You are not a fool, but one of the most intelligent women I know,” Frederick told her in a matter-of-fact tone. Before she could respond, he rolled her on her side and shifted so he could stretch out, leaving her wedged between him and the back of the sofa.

Daisy put her head on his shoulder. He smelled like whiskey and wood smoke, with just a touch of ink. “I feel very safe, tucked next to you. Do you suppose Belle feels safe in her basket?”

“She is safe in your arms,” he said. “Go to sleep, Daisy. Everything is better after a nap.”

“What are you reading?” she asked.

“Glenarvon, Lady Caroline’s Lamb’s new novel,” Frederick said.

“I didn’t like it. Did you know that Miles has never read a novel, not even one? Not even Pride and Prejudice, though everyone in polite society claims to have read it.”

“That’s a clear sign of future marital infelicity,” Frederick said. “He has no respect for the fictional worlds most of us escape to in order to survive the real one. Why didn’t you like Glenarvon? I’m tearing through it.”

“The biographical aspect. She’s not even trying to disguise a nasty portrait of Lord Byron as Lord Glenarvon.”

“Personally, I’m enjoying reading about the corruption of a young, innocent bride, though Caroline hardly fits the bill.”

“It’s an absurd book. What about the fact that the heroine’s infant brother is murdered and shows up alive later?”

“You’re spoiling it! He’s still dead to me,” Frederick complained.

“Soon he’ll be coming back from the dead. I suppose I’ll be an innocent bride forever,” Daisy said, hearing the ache in her own voice. “Not that I care much,” she added. “But I don’t like being shouted at. I’m impulsive and stupid and all the things he said, but I don’t like shouting.”

“You make decisions faster than the rest of us. You do have a tendency to lie to get your way, but you’ll outgrow it. As you said, your mother and father lied to you for years, so you never had a good model in that respect.”

She chuckled sleepily. “I left Miles a message saying that I wasn’t in love with him any longer.”

“Was that a lie?” Frederick asked softly.

She didn’t answer.

He sighed and opened up his book again. Hopefully he could get to the end before Miles showed up.

EPISODE ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN

THE THRONE OF LOVE

The Albany was a large brick building in Piccadilly, built for a viscount and divided into apartments for wealthy young men after his lordship realized he couldn’t afford all that magnificence. Miles climbed from his carriage in front of the entrance, anger still setting his teeth on edge.