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“Scarlett!” Alice gasped in censure, but there was no rancor in her tone.

Lady Brandon barely managed to let out a strangled sound. “I… I think I should leave you young ladies to talk,” she choked out, before she hastily left the room, muttering something about getting more pearls.

“But Phoebe is getting married. Shehasto have at least an idea about it!” the redhead argued.

“Youare not even betrothed yet, and you already have such ideas!”

“When I do get betrothed or married or whatever, I would expect a great deal from the gentleman!” Scarlett looked galled. “Heavens help me if I marry a man who can hardly kiss.”

Phoebe looked at her sister and their friends helplessly. Both Alice and Evie were happily married to husbands who loved them more than the world itself.

As for Scarlett… well, she had gentlemen falling over themselves for even a chance to talk to her. Phoebe was certain that any man she married would be more than happy to worship the ground she walked on.

“Dearest, Ethan may appear… well, unserious at times.” Alice smiled at her sister. “But he will not treat you badly. Colin and I will make sure of that.”

Somehow,thatdid not have the desired calming effect.

Phoebe shook her head. “I—I cannot allow a man to simply waltz right in and ruin my life!”

“Honestly speaking, my dear,youcompromised him,” Scarlett pointed out.

“I cannot just let him do what he pleases when it pleases him!”

By now, Phoebe was quite certain she was ranting. The complaints that had been stewing in her chest for the past week were now bubbling and spilling out of her mouth.

“Do you think he will be faithful?” she asked them. “Or would I have to bear it like a good wife while my husband considerately seeks out his mistress?”

The room fell silent, and for a while, all Phoebe could hear were her ragged breaths.

A wedding should be a happy event—or so she had been told.

Instead, she had jumped from an arranged betrothal to a man she barely knew to a marriage to a man she knew all too well.

Just as she was on the verge of tears, she felt warm comforting hands envelop her tense ones. She looked up to find her older sister giving her a gentle look.

“I cannot give you the assurance you seek, Sister,” Alice murmured. “But maybe marriagewilltame him.”

“That sounds very reassuring,” Phoebe snorted bitterly.

“I felt the same way about Colin,” her sister told her with a half-smile. “And unlike your Ethan, my husband had every intention of fighting matrimony all the way to the altar. Now, I cannot imagine myself with anyone else. He has become the man ofmy dreams, and despite his doubts, I am certain he will make a wonderful father.”

Two pairs of eyes swiveled over to Alice, who blushed and looked down at her still-flat stomach.

“You cannot mean to say—” Evie gasped.

The Duchess of Blackthorn nodded shyly in confirmation.

“I am going to be an aunt!” Evie breathed. “Phoebe, we are going to be aunts!”

“Oh, that is such wonderful news!”

The tense room was once again filled with excited chatter as everyone gathered to congratulate Alice. The newly pregnant Duchess smiled at everyone as she squeezed her sister’s hand.

“See, Phoebe?” she told her softly. “Some things do work out for the best. You just have to have a little faith, and perhaps a bit of daring to risk it all.”

But was that not the biggest difference between the two of them? While Alice was daring, getting into all sorts of trouble, Phoebe was the cautious one, forever afraid of venturing out of her comfort zone.

And what did she reap for all her painstaking efforts to stay on the straight and narrow path?