Page 28 of A Spy’s Guide to Seduction

“Oh, hello, Em,” he said. “Roz is up. Did you come to see her?”

“Yes,” she said, and was gone.

Chapter Ten

There is an ancient duty of hospitality that falls on those members of society blessed by fortune with large estates and grand edifices. Does Lady Castlewood possess a ballroom sufficiently large that three dozen couples or more may stand up at a time? Inevitably, Lady Castlewood feels her duty to send cards of invitation. Perhaps, over time, her ball becomes one of the highlights of the Season, anticipated by all. While this writer advises the husband hunter not to disdain the small dinner party, should the husband hunter receive an invitation to Lady Castlewood’s ball, there can be only one response. Go!

—The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London

Emily found Roz sitting up in bed in a pretty rose silk wrapper, sipping her morning chocolate, her black and white spaniel curled at her feet, everything cozy and soft. The dog thumped her tail on the blue coverlet in greeting, and Emily rubbed the silky ears.

Roz was just what Emily’s spirits needed after her conversation with Lynley had brought her back to earth with a jarring bump. “You look very pretty,” she told her sister.

Roz’s expression turned wistful. “Thank you. One doesn’t feel quite pretty, you know. How was the opera, Em?”

“You would have liked it, Roz. The princess’s attendants cavorted in harem pants throughout the evening.”

Roz sighed. “I do miss dancing.”

“Longing for a quadrille or a waltz?”

“I am. It’s nearly time for Lady Vange’s grand ball. I’ve gone every year since my come out until now.”

“Lady Vange’s party? I’d forgotten it.” Emily had gone to the grand affair twice before she’d abandoned husband hunting. She and Roz thought so differently about large parties. “Isn’t Lady Vange’s son Lord Hazelwood, the one who was...”

“Disgraced and disinherited?” Roz nodded and put down her chocolate. “But I read in the papers that he’s recently married a respectable girl, so perhaps his family will forgive him.”

Emily lifted the chocolate tray from Roz’s bed and sank into a soft blue velvet armchair. She did not remember seeing the Vange invitation in the cards at home, but she would look. “It’s a big party, isn’t it?” Exactly the sort of affair she had avoided for years, but it would be the perfect event for spy hunting.

“Quite. Near four hundred guests. The dancing starts at eleven, and the supper goes on from two to near morning, with seating for sixty guests at a time. You and Lynley could go if he—” She broke off.

“You needn’t conceal anything from me, Roz. I saw him this morning. He seems to be more or less in one piece, thanks to Phil apparently.”

“I’m glad. Phil felt there was something wrong about that club. That’s why he went back.”

Emily glanced round the room decorated with her sister’s usual blue and gold touches, but there were signs of Phil, too, in the dark, masculine wood of a pair of dressers and in a painting of horses and dogs gathering on a hunt morning. It was a shared space of two lives blended, not like the partnership to which she and Lynley had agreed.

“Em?” Roz recalled her to the present. “Are you sure you want to go on with your engagement?”

Emily managed a nod. “Why do you ask?”

“You look so serious is all.”

“Me? Serious? Never. You are the one who is seriously missing dancing and feeling that you’ve lost your prettiness. I should be the concerned sister.”

“I do miss going about. There is such a round of paying calls when one first marries. I suppose I got in the habit of it, and now...now I wait for people to call on me. I don’t blame them for not coming, of course. I seem unable to speak of anything except the baby, as if no other subject exists. I’m sure most people would rather talk of other things.”

“Roz, everyone has a favorite subject. Papa will talk for hours of porticoes, pillars, and staircases if you let him, and who is that young man who only speaks of his dogs?”

“Oh, Eversley.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’ve not stopped going out, have you?”

“Phil takes me for drives, and we walk a little, out of the way of everyone’s notice. I look rather like your beloved Chunee.”

“You do not.”

Roz nodded solemnly. “I do. My gowns are tents as I refuse to wear those stays Doctor Collins recommends that put a squeeze on the baby.”