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“Let me see!” Flora reached for the article, but Maisie snatched it close.

“You are seeing.” The younger girl stuck her tongue out. “You’re trying to take.”

“To try.”

“To take!”

The girls raised their voices in a rapidly spiraling quarrel.

Their mother rushed over. “Poppets, we do need to pack those.”

Maisie held the article protectively close to her chest. “Marcia would want me to try them on. Isn’t that right, Marcia?”

It was impossible to not smile at her younger sister. It was always impossible not to smile because of all of her siblings. “I do not see the harm in them trying them on,” she allowed, hopeless to deny them anything. “As long as they take turns,” she added. “In fact, if you do a very good job of it, then I will let you each keep one.”

Happy cries erupted from her sisters, and she managed her first real smile since she’d left the park.

Only…

Her smile fell.

She loved her siblings to the moon and beyond, and yet, she’d also thought nothing of putting their reputations in harm’s way with her pursuit of pleasure.

How selfish she’d been.

How self-absorbed.

Grief and pain and shame about her birth had all been the reasons for her recklessness. That, however, did not pardon her from doing as she’d pleased without proper regard for how it could affect their futures.

Yes, there’d only been strong whispers from theton, based on even stronger speculation following her father’s flight with her from Cyprian’s Den and then her hasty marriage. But the scandal remained, and her brothers and sisters deserved so much more.

She stared at her sisters as they played, boisterous in the gift of innocence afforded only a child. They didn’t know the truth surrounding the circumstances of Marcia’s birth, but they would one day learn that Marcia had been sired by another man. Society had already begun to speculate about the origins of their own births, and for that reason alone, Marcia should have done everything she could to conduct herself in a way that was above reproach, so one day, there were not more whispers they need contend with.

Her mother rested a hand upon her shoulder.

Marcia glanced over. “I am so sor—”

“They will be fine,” her mother interrupted and gave her arm a light squeeze. “They will find people who love them and respect them despite everything, and if they do not, well, then, they will be better without those people in their lives.”

Marcia caught the inside of her right cheek between her teeth. She didn’t deserve that grace. From any of her family.

Just then, the door opened, and Thomaston announced Lord Wessex as if they were meeting in a formal parlor. “You wished to”—every set of eyes swung to the father at the entryway of the room—“see me,” Marcus said, his voice slightly garbled. It took but a single glimpse to know he decidedly did not wish to talk. “I can wait belowstairs until you’re… finished!” he said on a rush, hurriedly moving to close the door.

“Not at all,” Marcia said, hopping up. “I came so I might speak with you.” Amongst other reasons.

When her father turned his gaze back on Marica, his features wore the same strain they had when she’d been a girl wondering aloud how babes were made.

Her father cast a desperate glance at his wife.

“Sorry,” she mouthed in return; though the little shrug Marcia’s mother gave was anything but commiserative. With a handful of words, the elder viscountess dismissed the servants, and her children.

Marcia’s siblings promptly groaned. “Do we have to leave?” Maisie wailed. “I haven’t even tried on the rose-covered bonnet.”

“There will be time enough for that,” their mother said soothingly, as she personally escorted each of her younger children from the room.

“Well, do not be long,” Lionel said, as he followed at the back of the sibling line. “I was in the midst of a serious sword battle at sea with Clarion.” The rest of the young boy’s words were muffled as their mother pushed the panel closed behind them, so that only Marcia and her father remained, and a quiet alongside it in her childhood chambers.

Marcia broke the silence. “Andrew said I should speak to you… about a matter that occurred between you and him. My husband would not break your confidence.”