Page 18

“Oh, my dear,” she said with a teasing shake of her head. “You needn’t be so stuffy. Everyone needs companionship, you know.”

The headache was behind both Benedict’s eyes now. Forget a quiet room, he was going to need to lie down with a cool compress, like a fainting maiden in a sensational story. For Christ’s sake.

“I am not telling you to avoid all companionship,” he explained wearily. “I am merely asking for some discretion.”

Now that she’d gotten what she wanted, however, his mother refused to be anything but happy.

“Oh, Benedict,” she laughed again. “You really need to relax.”

She was already walking away; she had no further use for him. As a parting shot, however, she threw a last comment over her shoulder.

“Perhaps you ought to seek some companionship of your own.”

And with that suggestion—horrifying from one’s mother,truly—she was gone.

CHAPTER 6

“Ithink I’ve gotten larger,” Diana lamented, staring down at her protruding stomach which currently had a small plate of biscuits balanced atop it.

“You haveabsolutelygotten larger,” Frances said matter-of-factly. The three friends were alone in Diana’s parlor which meant that Frances’ personality had emerged. No matter how long she’d known her, Emily never failed to be tickled by the capacity for bluntness that hid behind Frances’ typical retiring demeanor.

Diana pouted mightily. She’d gone through various stages of moodiness in her pregnancy, including grouchiness, weepiness, and a strange combination of hunger and anger. Fortunately, this pout seemed to be primarily for show.

“I don’t think you’re meant to say that to me,” she said to Frances.

Frances shrugged and applied herself to nibbling the frosting off a biscuit. “If you can’t ask your friends for the truth, who can you ask?”

“Not your husband,” Diana said sourly. Perhaps her bad moodwasn’tjust for show. “He said I lookedbeautiful.” She said it like she’d never heard such an insult in her life.

“The gall of him,” Frances said dryly.

“In fairness,” Emily said, “you do look beautiful. Just also quite round.”

This was true; Diana was one of those women who had bloomed in pregnancy. She looked almost as though she were glowing.

But yes, she was also very, very round.

And a bit feral, given that she responded to this by biting a biscuit like it had offended her.

When she was done, she heaved a sigh.

“Oh, goodness, don’t listen to me; I’m a mess. Everything is uncomfortable, and I know I’m being perfectly intolerable. Distract me. Distract me, please. Emily, tell me, have the terror twins gotten up to anything interesting?”

Emily shot her friend a baleful look. “Don’t even mention it!” she complained. “I know they’re half a city away, but they’ll hear you and get ideas.” She rolled her eyes while her friends snickered. “But no—and I’m certain to be cursing myself by saying this, no doubt—but they’ve been relatively well-behaved sincethe incidentwith the Earl of Moore.”

Frances and Diana exchanged a glance that suggested they had many thoughts that pertained to the Earl of Moore.

“Well, Em,” Diana said cautiously, and Emily felt that it wasquiterich indeed for Diana to act as if Emily were the volatile one in this room, “you were abitharsh on the man the other night.”

Emily’s mouth dropped open. “His mother’s lover shot your husband!” she exclaimed.

Diana narrowed her eyes in a clear invitation for Emily to listen to herself.

“True,” she allowed, “but the Earl of Moore, by all accounts, had nothing to do with that. And while I suppose it’s not impossible that he was involved, it seems highly unlikely that he and the criminal liaising with his mother were on speaking terms.”

That was…annoyingly reasonable.

“Fine,” Emily huffed. “But that wasn’t even the incident in question.The incident,” she repeated with the correct levelof gravitas, “was when he called upon Amanda the following morning.”