Our hound.

The hound was Castleton’s ruby ring. A living, breathing chromium-filled crystal.

Suddenly, it all seemed very serious.

They were to be married. They were to have a hound. And she was to name it.

A hound was much more than betrothal balls and trousseaus and wedding plans—all things that seemed utterly inconsequential when it came right down to it.

A hound made the future real.

A hound meant a home, and seasons passing and visits from neighbors and Sunday masses and harvest festivals. A hound meant a family. Children. His children.

She looked up into the kind, smiling eyes of her fiancé. He was waiting, eager for her to speak.

“I—” She stopped, not knowing what to say. “I haven’t any good ideas.”

He chuckled. “Well, she doesn’t know the difference. You are welcome to think about it.” He leaned low, one blond lock falling over his brow. “You should meet her first. Perhaps that would help.”

She forced a smile. “Perhaps it would.”

Perhaps it would make her want to marry him more.

She liked dogs. They had that in common.

The thought reminded her of her conversation with Mr. Cross, during which she’d told him the same as proof of her compatibility with the earl. He’d scoffed at her, and she’d ignored it.

It was all they’d said of the earl . . . until Mr. Cross had refused her request and sent her home, with a comment that echoed through her now, as she stood awkwardly beside her future husband. I suggest you query another. Perhaps your fiancé?

Perhaps she should query her fiancé. Surely he knew more than he revealed about the . . . intricacies of marriage. It did not matter that he’d never once given her even the slightest suggestion that he cared a bit for those intricacies.

Gentlemen knew about them. Far more than ladies did.

That this was a horrendously unequal truth was not the point, currently.

She peered up at Castleton, who was not looking at her. Instead, he appeared to be looking anywhere but her. She took the moment to consider her next step. He was close, after all—close enough to touch. Perhaps she ought to touch him.

He looked down at her, surprise flaring in his warm brown gaze when he discovered her notice. He smiled.

It was now or never.

She reached out and touched him, letting her silk-clad fingers slide over his kid-clad hand. His smile did not waver. Instead, he lifted his other arm and patted her hand twice, as he might do a hound’s head. It was the least carnal touch she could imagine. Not at all reminiscent of the wedding vows. Indeed, it indicated that he had no trouble with the bit about not entering into marriage like a brute beast.

She extricated her hand.

“All right?” he asked, already returning his attention to the room at large.

It did not take a woman of great experience to know that her touch had had no effect on him. Which she supposed was only fair, as his touch was absent an effect on her.

A lady laughed nearby, and Pippa turned toward the sound, light and airy and false. It was the kind of laugh she’d never perfected—her laughs were always too loud, or came at the wrong time, or not at all.

“I think I would like some lemonade, if the offer remains,” she said.

He jolted to attention at the words, “I shall fetch it for you!”

She smiled. “That would be lovely.”

He pointed to the floor. “I shall return!”

“Excellent.”

And then he was gone, pushing through the crowd with an eagerness that one might associate with something more exciting than lemonade.

Pippa planned to wait, but it was something of a bore, and with the pressing heat of the room and the hundreds of people, it might take Castleton a quarter of an hour to return, and waiting alone, rather publicly, felt strange. So instead, she slipped away to a darker, quieter edge of the room where she could stand back and observe the crowd.

People appeared to be having a lovely time. Olivia was holding court on the far end of the room, she and Tottenham surrounded by a throng of people who wanted the ear of the next prime minister. Pippa’s mother and Lady Castleton had collected Tottenham’s mother and a clutch of doyennes who were no doubt engaged in a round of scathing gossip.

As she scanned the crowd, her attention was drawn to an alcove directly across from her, where a tall, dark-haired gentleman leaned too close to his companion, lips nearly touching her ear in a manner that spoke clearly of a clandestine assignation. The couple appeared to care not a bit for their public locale, and were no doubt causing tongues to wag throughout the ballroom.

Not that such a thing was out of the ordinary for those two.

Pippa smiled. Bourne had arrived and, as ever, had eyes only for her sister.

Few understood how Penny had landed the cold, aloof, immovable Bourne—Pippa rarely saw the marquess smile or show any emotion whatsoever outside of his interactions with his doting wife—but there was no doubt that he had been landed, and was utterly smitten.

Penny swore it was love, and that was the bit that Pippa did not understand. She never liked the idea of love matches—there was too much about them that could not be explained. Too much that was ethereal. Pippa did not believe in ethereal. She believed in factual.

She watched as her proper sister placed her hands on her husband’s chest and pushed him away, laughing and blushing like a newly out debutante. He caught her close once more, pressing a kiss to her temple before she pulled away and dove back into the crowd. Bourne followed, as if on a string.

Pippa shook her head at the strange, unlikely sight.

Love, if it were a thing, was an odd thing, indeed.