Selina’s throat felt dry, and she tried to swallow. “Does it?”
“Mm.” He tugged at his cuff, an old familiar gesture that caught her heart. “Why neither of you ever asked for a larger allowance, for one. I’d rather wondered about that.”
“Does this explain why your lady’s maid is so attached to you, then?” asked Thomasin. “I’ve been trying to lure her into my service for years. Bribery, was it?” She made a sage little hum. “I should’ve tried that myself.”
“And all those visits you made when we were in Gloucestershire at Broadmayne,” Nicholas added. “To Ivy? Yes, of course, that makes sense. I did think it odd that you were suddenly so keen to shop in the village.”
“And those gowns!” Daphne nodded. “I thought I’d lost all sense of fashion when you started buying up those eye-poppingly colored gowns.” She paused. “Actually, no, I take it back. I still don’t understand the gowns. I beg your pardon—perhaps I simplydon’tunderstand fashion.” She looked chagrined.
Selina stared at them all. Daphne, Nicholas, Thomasin, Judith: All four looked at her placidly. Thomasin took a sip of hertea, then winced. Their cups had grown cold in the time it had taken to hear all of Selina’s recital.
“Have you all lost your senses?” Selina demanded, almost incensed by their inexplicable calm. “Did you nothearme?”
“To be honest,” said Daphne, “I think it’s wonderful. I wasted a great many years suffering because of my ignorance on such topics. Before I married your brother I was terribly—” She blushed a little, but set her teeth. “Deceived. I was deceived, and if I’d had something like your catalog, I would not have been so naive.”
Nicholas caught Daphne’s hand in his and drew it into his lap, his expression very gentle.
“I, too,” said Thomasin slowly, “could have benefited.” She cast a glance to Aunt Judith, who had not, as yet, said anything at all about Selina’s revelations. A smile caught at Thomasin’s lips, but it was sad, somehow. Selina did not think she’d seen that expression on Thomasin’s face before.
“I felt,” Thomasin said softly, “so alone, for so long. I felt—oh, peculiar. Abnormal. I thought I would never be quite—quite happy, you know. It would have been good. To know that I was not alone.”
Selina turned her face toward her aunt, half blind with tears. “Aunt Judith, you must make them see sense!”
“Child,” Aunt Judith said, “you have been very foolish.”
“Now, Jude—” Thomasin tried to cut in, but Aunt Judith laid her hand on Thomasin’s knee, and Thomasin halted.
“I cannot pretend it’s not so. She has been foolish. She will have made her path much harder for herself with this library, with this scandal.” Aunt Judith’s eyes fell on Nicholas and Daphne, on Thomasin. “I begin to fear that no one in this family knows how to take the easiest road.” Her voice was stern but her expression was rather at odds with her tone. The firm press of her lips softened by degrees. “Foolish,” she said again, “but brave too.”
“Like a Ravenscroft,” said Nicholas drily.
“Indeed.” Aunt Judith put her hands together in her lap. “Now then, child. Let us put our foolish heads together and work out how to enact your husband’s plan.”
Selina heard herself make a choked wordless sound. She set the teacup down in its saucer on the table beside her. She turned it carefully so that the handle of the cup was parallel to the edge of the table. And when she had her voice under control again, she looked up at them.
“You are not angry with me?”
“Well, yes, rather,” said Thomasin mildly. “You have done a great deal of lying, you know. You might have trusted us.”
“I suppose I should have liked to have been warned,” offered Nicholas.
Daphne made a delicate snorting sound under her breath. “As though you would have let her do it, had you known.”
“Come now,” he protested. “No oneletsSelina do anything.”
“For my part, I’d like a free membership to Belvoir’s,” said Thomasin. “Consider it your recompense.”
Selina let out a shaky breath. “Can’t,” she said. “No nepotism. Wouldn’t want to ruin my reputation.”
Thomasin—bless her—was the first to laugh. And then they all did, even Aunt Judith, and Selina felt love and relief swamp her. They did not hate her. They were not going to throw her out.
Perhaps she had not expected that they would, not really. Nother family. But she had not expected this either: their solid, steady acceptance of her, in all her turmoil and mistakes.
“My darling,” said Thomasin, “don’t cry.”
They had just begun to work out the details—Nicholas would visit Alverthorpe at his home, Aunt Judith would call upon Faiza’s very well-connected mother, Mrs. Khan—when the liveried butler entered the room.
“Your Grace,” he said blandly.
