The casual observation sent a chill through her. “What does that mean?”

“Only that one learns plenty of things when one is trapped in a town house with nothing to read but the gossip rags from the past six months. You have been as scandalous as I was. All garden trysts and toppling vegetables and falling in the Serpentine!” Louisa laughed, a high, tinkling sound that Juliana loathed. “My! What fun that must have been!”

“It was terrifying. I nearly drowned.”

He saved me.

“Oh, I’m sure you’re exaggerating. And you were rescued by a dashing duke! It sounds precisely like something I would have done if I hadn’t been married at a foolishly young age and become the mother of twins. I will tell you, if I had it to do again, I would have been more of a scandal and less of a marchioness, that is certain.”

“You were plenty of scandal, Mother, I assure you.”

“Yes, but I wasn’t here to see it, darling, so it’s almost as though it didn’t happen,” she said as if she were speaking to a child. “You, however . . . you are living your scandal.”

It wasn’t true. She was living the reputation that she had inherited from this woman, who seemed not to care at all for the burdens with which she had saddled her children.

She was more than that.

Wasn’t she?

Her mother pressed on, her tone airy, as though she had never given much thought to her actions. To the way they might have affected others. “You did well without me, darling. To think . . . you’ve found your brothers . . . and they care for you. Yes . . . I’ve done my job.”

Louisa’s self-satisfaction was undeniable. Juliana could not help her laugh. It was rather impossible to hate someone who seemed so utterly disconnected from her own actions.

“I know you want a better reason, Juliana. I know you wish there were some answer that would make everything cleaner. That would make you forgive me. But there isn’t. I made some difficult choices. And if I had it to do over again, I’m not sure I would make them again.”

“You mean, choosing to have us? Or choosing to leave us?”

Louisa did not speak.

She did not have to. The answer was in her eyes.

And everything became clear.

She was nothing like her mother.

Juliana let out a long breath, a breath she felt she had been holding for a decade, and stood, taking in her mother, who looked so much like her—as though she were looking into the future.

A different future than before.

A better one.

Because of a mother who had never once shown caring or attention, and who, once she had left, had never looked back, Juliana at last had a family. And perhaps it was enough.

Perhaps she could convince herself of it.

Soon her brother’s house would be filled with laughing children and loving parents, and perhaps the noise would block out the time when she had been close to finding love of her own.

Perhaps there would be a time when he was not constantly in her thoughts.

When she did not love him so much.

It seemed impossible.

She looked to the statue again, watching as Eros stretched for that elusive thing beyond his reach.

It was all she could hope for.

Simon stood just inside his study, exhausted and covered in mud from his journey across England. He’d arrived at his town house in the dead of night, only to discover that all hell had broken loose while he was gone.

Boggs had taken his cloak and hat, handed Simon the Gazette with an even-more-somber expression than usual on his usually-quite-somber face, and gone to find food, as Simon had done nothing but change horses in the last eighteen hours, so desperate had he been to get back to London.

And to Juliana.

Simon stared down at the newspaper, reading the words again and again, as though repeat viewings could somehow change them. Take them away. But no, every time he read the article, it was precisely the same. Precisely as damning.

First person account . . . Duke of Leighton . . . his sister, not even out . . . in a family way . . . a daughter, born just days ago.

He was going to murder his sister.

She’d known he would never reveal the scandal himself. She’d known he’d never risk her reputation, or Caroline’s, in such a way.

And so she’d taken matters into her own hands.

Why?

The answer flashed, quick and so obvious, he couldn’t believe he had missed it. He moved to his desk and lifted the pile of correspondence there, sifting through until he found the square of paper that he was looking for.

Slipping his finger beneath the wax seal, he allowed himself to hope. Not much. Just until he read the single line of text there, underlined. Twice.

The engagement is off. –Needham

Georgiana had made certain that his betrothal to Penelope could not stand.

Your betrothal gift has already been sent to London.

She’d ruined herself. Ruined them all.

To ensure his happiness.

Now he had only to reach out and take it.

The Northumberland autumn ball was planned as the last official event of the season, before Parliament’s special session finished and society packed up and headed for the country for the close of the year.

The stairs leading up to the house and the foyer were packed with throngs of revelers, passing their heavy cloaks to footmen and moving up the grand staircase to the ballroom, where the main festivities were already under way.

All of London society had braved a particularly nasty rain to be there, a fitting end to this altogether-too-long of a season.

And if Simon’s evening went according to plan, this ball was going to be the talk of not only that season but several more to come.