Page 75

Hannah suppressed a groan, once again forced to consider if this dinner party of hers wasn’t one of the worst ideas she’d ever had.

Her father and her aunt’s bickering was expected, even if it was worse than usual. But that was only half the problem. To her aunt’s right sat her cousin Selina, who since arriving hadn’t so much as looked at her. She sat with her eyes cast downward and her shoulders hunched over in an effort to look invisible, which suggested to Hannah that her cousin was still angry about what had happened but possessed more tact than her mother and knew better than to cause a scene… thankfully.

As to Frederick? He was a mystery that Hannah was still struggling to solve, even though she was beginning to understand his intentions toward her and their marriage. Hannah needed her sisters here. She needed to change the topic. She needed… she needed… She needed a miracle, truth be told.

“… all I am saying is that His Grace has surely done enough for you, Phineas,” her aunt was saying. “You keep pestering him like this, and he would be within his rights to cut you off.”

“You make it sound as if I am hounding him day and night like some overzealous innkeeper! I have done nothing of the sort.”

“Some gratitude, perhaps,” Teresa huffed. “The way you treat His Grace, it is as if you think he owes you, when the opposite is true.”

“Your bitterness gives you away, Teresa. Green is a most unbecoming color on you.”

“What bitterness? Selina could not be happier about what happened—isn’t that right, dear?” She nudged her daughter.

“W-what?” Selina looked up, her eyes wide in shock.

“In fact, it might interest you to know that she has received many offers of courtship from many interested gentlemen. The past is behind us, which is where I will ask you to leave it.”

“Me!”

Hannah leaned into Frederick and whispered in his ear, “I am so sorry about this. I should have known inviting them here would result in such foolery as this.”

“Is it fine,” Frederick assured her, a soft smile on his lips, and he squeezed her hand, though he didn’t look at her. “I have met your aunt before, remember.”

“It isn’t fine,” Hannah insisted. “But you are being wonderful about it.” She squeezed his hand back, begging him to look at her, to give her a hint that he was fine and not looking for a way out. “I will be sure to make it up to you.”

“I told you, it is fine…” He finally looked at her, offering a gracious smile, followed by a soft kiss on the cheek. “I am having a good time, I promise.”

Again, to anyone watching, that alone would have signaled that the two were happy and nothing was amiss in their marriage. And indeed, Hannah caught her aunt eyeing them ruefully, which should have made her feel better if she hadn’t caught her cousin frowning. The guilt rose within her once more.

Lucky then that moments later, Hannah’s sisters and husbands arrived, which gave them an excuse to adjourn to the dining room, where the seating arrangements had been pre-designed to keep her father and aunt at opposite ends of the table.

And for a few minutes there, the evening finally began to look like what she had envisioned initially. Pleasant chatter. Everyone getting along. And, of course, the conversation shifting to the one topic that Hannah had hoped that it would, spoken in a way she knew could only bolster her conviction that she had made the right choice.

“… and would you believe that Henry wants another one?” Charlotte was laughing as she looked at her husband with love in her eyes.

“Can you blame me?” The Duke of Hayward chuckled as he kissed the back of his wife’s hand. “Honestly, I don’t know what all the fuss is about. Who would have guessed that raising children could be so easy.”

“Easily said when you are not the one who has to carry them for nine months,” Beatrice chided from across the table.

“Exactly!” Charlotte piped up.

“Careful now.” Beatrice’s husband, the Duke of Walford, laughed. “It will just give your wife something else to hold over you. Are you sure you want such a thing?”

“Oh, she likes to pretend that it was the hardest thing in the world, but from what I saw, it was nothing too taxing,” Henry chided his wife.

“Excuse me?” Charlotte rounded on him. “What did you just say?”

“Just making a joke, dear.” He chuckled and held up his hands in surrender.

“I thought the prerequisite of a joke was for it to be funny.”

“They think it is so easy,” Beatrice sighed as she took a sip of her wine. “Men. What they do not realize is the work that we must put in long before the babe is born. It doesn’t just appear one day, you know.”

“Is that why your stomach was so swollen all this time?” The Duke of Walford grinned and nudged her. “I just thought you were getting fat.”

“How dare you!”