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Jacob sat up straight, and Susan leaned into the room, her eyes bright with interest.

“His heir? Then you have the wrong household,” Caroline said. “My father was the fourth and youngest son, from what I remember of his stories.”

“Why are you here, sharing this news? Why has a solicitor not come to call?” Jacob demanded. “Is this some kind of hoax?”

“Your father’s brothers all passed without issue before your father died nine years ago. He was therefore the rightful heir to a baronetcy.” He turned to Jacob and bowed. “Which makes you, young man, Sir Jacob Reeve—the current baronet.”

Chapter Twenty

Caroline told Arabella everything she knew about Jacob and his gambling debts after they left the eatery. After they had finished dinner, Betsy and Susan had gone in search of Lady Margaret, as they were to attend a soiree later in the evening.

“Jacob is in a predicament,” Caroline said as they walked through town, arm in arm. “That much can be deduced. But the rest of the details are foggy indeed.”

Arabella frowned. “Did he tell you to whom he lost the money?”

“Yes, but the name is unfamiliar to me. No one I’ve asked has ever heard of him.”

“I suppose he was a visitor, wishing to impress. But oh, how awful for Jacob.”

Caroline had to bite her tongue before saying much more, because she wanted to tell Arabella that this had proved her point. Her siblings still needed protection from the vagaries of life.

Two weeks passed, which stretched Caroline’s nerves to the breaking point. The only pleasure in her days was when she accompanied Arabella to her painting sessions on the beach, each one more successful than the last. It brought her a deep joy to see how people reacted to Arabella and her art.

After all, how could anyonenotreact with joy around Arabella?

She certainly did, when they found a private hour or two to spend by themselves.

Caroline’s evenings were strained. She spent them dancing at the assembly rooms or dining with new friends and acquaintances, all thewhile maintaining the facade that the Reeves were respectable. She pushed Betsy and Susan at every suitor who looked their way, despite her sisters’ lukewarm reception.

Caroline found relief in an invitation from Rachel and Matthew to dine one night. Her return to Belvoir Lane felt like a balm to her soul. She needed no airs or pretensions at the Seton dinner table. The Setons were like family. And Arabella, smiling at her from across the table, was becoming so much more than family.

Matthew offered the service of Fred, the Setons’ manservant, to escort Caroline home after the last sip of tea and the last crumb of cake had long since disappeared.

“I shall go with her,” Arabella announced.

“Yes, do spend the night at the Reeves’,” Rachel said. “I am sure you two miss having so many opportunities to talk in a day, as you once did!”

The evening turned to dusk as they left the house, pink and orange streaking across the sky from the setting run. The air was warm and lovely, but Caroline felt restless. She wanted to hold this moment in the palm of her hand, perfect and eternal, and at the same time she wished to speed their way through Inverley to tumble Arabella onto her feather bed.

She wanted it all. The past and the future. Why could not time hold still? She spent so little of the present enjoying it, always worried about what would come next. Why were the minutes so fleeting, forever changing her life into something else?

There was the faint strain of music in the air, and Caroline slowed as they walked past the grocer’s.

“You need something to distract yourself from your troubles,” Arabella said. “Shall we? For old time’s sake?”

Caroline grinned. “Yes.”

Fred was more than happy to accompany them to the second floor of the grocer’s shop for the evening. The monthly dance was welcome to all in the neighborhood.

They made their way upstairs, and a crowd of familiar faces awaited them. The grocer and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Elmaleh, were busy handing around refreshments. There was the butcher, the blacksmith, and the candlestick maker, and their sons and daughters.Caroline had moved but half a mile from her old home, and yet she hadn’t seen these people in ages. The realization humbled her. Was it possible that Arabella had been right? Was she growing too proud of her new station, for her to have forgotten where she came from? These were friends and neighbors who had always treated her well and never had anything but a kind word for her and her family. She would have to do better by them. She wanted to be Caroline of Inverley, not treated like a visitor in her own village.

There were no grand musicians trained in London here tonight—there was simply old Mr. Brown playing rousing music on his fiddle, his rheumatic wrist slipping up a note here and there.

“Why, Miss Reeve! Thought you might be too grand for us these days.” Mr. Elmaleh grinned at her. “I used to see you all the time in the shop, and now you’ve a manservant to do the shopping for you. Thought you forgot all about us.”

“Never, sir!” She dug into her reticule and dropped a guinea in his palm.

He tried to press it back into her hand. “You know better than anyone that this is no fancy place, with subscription fees and whatnot. Townsfolk having fun, that’s all we want here.”