Thomasin looked up at her, blue-eyed and dimpled. “You need not go through with it, darling girl, unless you want to. Unlessthis marriage—thisman—is the one you want. We will be beside you either way.”
Selina’s eyes burned, tears threatening to spill over. “Thank you,” she managed, her voice catching in her throat. “This is what I want, Thomasin. It truly is.”
“Then all will be well,” Thomasin said. “I promise.”
From beside them, Lydia put in, “Don’t act as though you are surprised, Thomasin. I know you saw through her as long ago as I did. The sheerpassionSelina displayed for Stanhope’s bridal prospects was not particularly subtle.”
Selina blinked.
Before she could reply, Daphne added in her soft voice, “Surely I cannot have been the only one to notice the way she ogled Stanhope’s hands over dinner.”
“I—”
Oh, shehad. It was true. The man had beautiful hands, curse him.
“Personally,” offered Aunt Judith, “I rather thought she wanted Stanhope for his buttocks.”
Selina’s mouth fell open.
Hers was not the only one.
Daphne and Lydia were still recovering themselves when Thomasin plucked a headpiece from the pile and presented it to Selina. “This one, darling. This is the right one, I think.”
Selina looked down dizzily at the coronet of pearls and little stars made from delicate brass wire. “Yes,” she said. “Yes.”
They were on their way out—Thomasin having bundledelevenseparate items of nightwear into their purchase of Selina’s wedding dress—when they encountered the dowager Marchioness of Queensbury and the Countess of Alverthorpe.
The two women appeared to be on the point of entering the modiste’s shop, and so Selina stepped back to let them in.
She tried to hold in a wince at the sight of Lady Alverthorpe, Georgiana’s mother. The last time she had spoken to the countess was in the Park, when she had been busily organizing the courtship of the woman’s daughter to the man Selina now meant to pledgeherselfto in roughly eighteen hours.
Of course Lady Alverthorpe knew about the impending marriage. Everyone knew.
But Lady Queensbury and Lady Alverthorpe didn’t enter after all. They looked into the shop, their gazes sliding over Selina and her family as if they did not see them, and then stepped delicately back into the sunshine of Portman Square without a word.
Selina stared after them, agog.
“Did they—” Her voice cracked, and she started again, furious with herself. “Did they not acknowledge us? Are we to be cut simply because Stanhope has decided to marry in haste?”
She had not anticipated this at all. Surely the precipitate wedding would be seen asromantic, would it not? At least to Lord and Lady Eldon?
She did not care, really, for the opinions of a couple of matrons. Only—she did not want anyone to think less of Peter.
But Daphne pinched her lips together, her face paling. “It’s not about you and Stanhope, I promise. No doubt Lady Alverthorpe is listening to that miserable husband of hers. It’s—” She cut herself off mid-sentence and shook her head. “It’s something to do with Nicholas. An idle political rumor. Ignore it and it shall dissipate on its own in time.”
“A rumor? About what?”
But Daphne only shook her head and did not answer, directing the conversation rather forcefully to what she had planned for the wedding breakfast at Rowland House on the morrow.
Once they made their way into Portman Square, however, Selina dropped back behind her family and caught Lydia’s arm. “Do you know what Daphne meant? A political rumor—about my brother?”
Nicholas was often the subject of debate, what with his progressive politics within the reactionary Lords, but he had never before been the subject of enough scandal that his own family was given the cut indirect in public.
Lydia grimaced. “It’s stupidity.”
“What? Tell me, Lyddie. I want to know.”
Lydia lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Lord Alverthorpe has never been fond of your brother, not since Nicholas defended the mill workers’ riots in Nottingham two years ago. Alverthorpe thought they all ought to be shot.”
