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Margaret blinked up at him, starting to look a little guilty.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled, setting aside the champagne. “I… I just can never stop thinking about it.”

Cassian swallowed thickly, nodding. “I know. I know, Margaret. But worrying about the past won’t improve Frances’s future, will it?”

Margaret breathed in, blinking hard to force back tears. In a flash, the old Margaret was back—bright-eyed, smiling wryly, alert and alive.

“Oh, my daughter will have the finest life I can give her,” she murmured.

“The finest lifewecan give her,” Cassian corrected. “Now, Richard tells me something has upset you. Care to tell me what it is?”

Margaret eyed him for a moment, then a shutter seemed to come down over her expression.

“I have no idea what that wide-eyed, little fool is talking about,” she sniffed, tossing back her hair.

“Hm.” Cassian narrowed his eyes at her.

There was something Margaret wasn’t telling him, but there was no sense in trying to force it out of her. Nobody could force Margaret to do anything.

That was why Matthew loved her so dearly, I suppose. Her spirit. He thought she could never be broken and would never waver in her convictions.

If only he hadn’t been so wrong.

Cassian forced that thought out of his mind. “Well, if that’s everything…” he began, only to be interrupted.

“That lady is staring at you, by the way,” Margaret noted, gesturing with her glass.

Cassian turned to find Miss Belmont huddled together with her sisters a little way off. The two duchesses were whispering amongst themselves, but Miss Belmont was staring at him, a faint furrow between her eyebrows. When their eyes met, she glanced away and did not look back.

“Oh dear,” Margaret murmured, sounding almost amused. “Perhaps you’re not the only jealous one in this littletendre.”

“It’s not a t—oh, never mind. Just try not to embarrass yourselftoomuch tonight, Margaret. Can you manage that?” Cassian snapped.

Margaret chuckled, tossing back her champagne. “I make no promises.”

Cassian turned around to find Miss Belmont again, but between one moment and the next, she’d vanished entirely.

Wonderful.

* * *

“Mama,” Emily said, tracking the duke’s progress across the room, “who is that woman? That one there, on the chaise lounge. Oh, the duke is sitting beside her now.”

Octavia glanced over and winced. “Oh. That is the Baroness Rawdon.”

“I haven’t met her before,” Daphne remarked, craning her neck. “She’s very pretty.”

Octavia sighed. “No, she generally is not introduced to impressionable young women. She might be a fairly respectable baroness, and a widow into the bargain, but nobody forgets that she was once anopera singer. You girls won’t remember, of course, but it wasquitethe scandal when the old baron—a confirmed bachelor, you know—abruptly married the girl. She wasn’t accepted in Society for years, and even now, there are plenty of doors that are firmly closed in her face.

“She has a daughter, although I can’t quite remember the girl’s name. She comes out next year, I think. The baron’s fortune is tied up in quite an odd way if I recall, but the pair of them seem comfortable enough. I suppose we ought not to judge. We all assumed the baroness would marry again, but she never did. She’s almost been forgotten, poor thing.”

Emily said nothing, staring at the duke. He’d dismissed the baroness’s would-be admirers with a steely glare. She hadn’t even glanced their way. Her gaze was fixed on the duke, and his on her. They were entirely focused on each other, conversing in low voices.

A lump was forming in Emily’s throat. She swallowed hard, trying to make it go away, but to no avail.

The baroness was such a beautiful woman, despite her age. Or perhaps because of it. She had a languid smile and large, heavy-lidded green eyes that seemed to draw a person in. Were they drawing the duke in?

Emily had never seen him concentrate so much on one person. And he’d even sat beside the woman, instead of looming over her with that knowing, amused smile.