Temple laughed. “Lady Needham would run for her smelling salts were I to darken her doorstep.”

“That does not say much. The lady runs for her smelling salts more often than most.”

The Marbury betrothal ball. Pippa Marbury’s betrothal ball.

Guilt flared again. Perhaps he should tell Bourne everything.

Don’t tell Bourne, please. The lady’s plea echoed through him, and he gritted his teeth. “Lady Philippa is still for Castleton?” Cross asked, feeling like an idiot, certain that Bourne would see through the query, would recognize his curiosity. Would question it.

“She’s been given every opportunity to end it,” Bourne said. “The girl is too honorable, she’ll be bored with him in a fortnight.”

Less than that.

“You should stop it. Hell, Needham should stop it,” Cross said. Lord knew the Marquess of Needham and Dolby had stopped engagements before. He’d nearly ruined all five of his daughters’ chances for proper marriages by ending a legendary engagement years ago.

“It’s my fault, dammit. I should have put an end to it before it even began,” Bourne said bitterly, no small amount of regret in his words. “I’ve asked her to end it—Penelope, too. We’ve both told her we’d protect her. Hell, I’d find her a proper groom tonight if I thought it would help. But Pippa doesn’t want it stopped.”

I shall do it because I have agreed to, and I do not care for dishonesty. He heard the words, saw her serious blue gaze as she defended her choice to marry Castleton—a man so far beneath her in intellect, it was impossible to believe the impending marriage was not a farce.

Nevertheless, the lady had made a promise, and she intended to keep it.

And that, alone, made her remarkable.

Unaware of Cross’s thoughts, Bourne straightened and adjusted his coat sleeves with a wicked swear. “It is too late now. She’s at her betrothal ball in front of all the ton as we speak. I must go. Penelope will have my head if I do not appear.”

“Your wife has you right where she wants you,” Temple said dryly, the carom balls clacking together as he spoke.

Bourne did not rise to the bait. “She does indeed. And someday, if you are lucky, you will take the same pleasure I do in the location.” He turned to leave, heading for his other life—a newly returned aristocrat.

Cross stopped him. “Most of the peerage is there?”

Bourne turned back. “Is there someone specific you seek?”

“Dunblade.”

Understanding flared in Bourne’s brown eyes. “I imagine he will attend. With his baroness.”

“Perhaps I will pay Dolby House a visit.”

Bourne raised a brow. “I do enjoy operating beneath my father-in-law’s notice.”

Cross nodded.

It was time he see his sister. Seven years had been too long.

Half of London was in the ballroom below.

Pippa peered down from her hiding place in the upper colonnade of the Dolby House ballroom, pressed flat against one massive marble column, stroking the head of her spaniel, Trotula, as she watched the swirling silks and satins waltz across the mahogany floor. She pushed back a heavy drape of velvet curtain, watching her mother greet an endless stream of guests at this—what might be the Marchioness of Needham and Dolby’s greatest achievement.

It was not every day, after all, that mothers of five daughters have the opportunity to announce the marriage of her final offspring. Her final two offspring. The marchioness was fairly weak from glee.

Sadly, not weak enough to forgo a double betrothal ball large enough to accommodate an army. “Just a selection of dear friends,” Lady Needham had said last week, when Pippa had questioned the sheer volume of replies that had arrived piled high on a silver tray one afternoon, threatening to slide off the charger and onto the footman’s shiny black boot.

Dear friends, Philippa recalled wryly, her gaze scanning the crowd. She’d have sworn she’d never even met the greater share of people in the room below.

Not that she did not understand her mother’s excitement. After all, this day—when all five of the Marbury girls were officially and publicly matched—was a long time coming, and not without its hesitations. But finally, finally, the marchioness was to have her due.

Weddings were nothing if not for mothers, were they not?

Or, if not weddings, at least betrothal balls.

That went doubly so when the betrothal ball was to celebrate two daughters.

Pippa’s gaze slid from her mother’s flushed face and effusive movements to settle on the youngest Marbury sister, holding a court of her own on the opposite end of the ballroom, in a crush of well-wishers, smiling wide, one bejeweled hand on the arm of her tall, handsome fiancé.

Olivia was the prettiest and most ebullient of the quintet, she had seemed to get all the best bits from the rest of the family. Was she utterly self-involved and filled with more than her fair allotment of confidence? Certainly. But it was difficult to judge the traits harshly, as Olivia had never once met a person she could not win.

Including the man who was predicted to soon become one of the most powerful in Britain, for if there were two things a politician’s wife required, they were a bold smile and a desire to win—things Olivia had in spades.

Indeed, all of London was abuzz with the news of the couple’s impending marriage, Pippa rather thought that no one downstairs would even notice she was gone.

“I thought I might find you here.”

Pippa let the curtain drop and spun to face her eldest sister, the recently minted Marchioness of Bourne. “Shouldn’t you be at the ball?”