Penelope reached across the space between them and took her friend’s hand. The fingers that gripped hers were ice-cold and trembling. She thought of her own hands, white-knuckled against the edge of Rose’s cradle two nights ago, holding herself in place when every part of her had wanted to step forward instead of back.
“You think I’m being foolish,” Hyacinth said.
“I think you’re being brave.”
Hyacinth’s head snapped up, surprise breaking through the misery on her face. “Brave? I’m sneaking around behind my mother’s back to meet a man with no prospects. That isn’t bravery. That’s madness.”
“Perhaps.” Penelope squeezed her hand. “Or perhaps it’s the first honest thing you’ve done since you decided to approach marriage like a military campaign.”
Hyacinth flinched, but she didn’t pull away. “That’s not fair.”
“Isn’t it?” Penelope’s voice was gentler than her words. “You made a list, Hyacinth. You ranked men by acreage and annual income. You selected Sir Edmund the way one selects a horse at Tattersalls—sound investment, good breeding, likely to hold value.”
“Because that is what sensible womendo.” But the conviction had drained from her voice, leaving only the raw question beneath. “What else is there? Marry for feeling and risk everything? End up penniless and disgraced because you chose a man who made you laugh over a man who could keep you comfortable?”
The question hung between them, and Penelope felt it in her own body with the weight she’d been avoiding for weeks.What else is there?She thought of rules and boundaries and a marriage of convenience that was beginning to feel like anything but. Of a man who hid his tenderness with wit, who held a sleeping baby as though she were made of blown glass, who had nearly kissed her in a darkened nursery and then walked away because she’d asked him to.
Who had walked away because she’d asked him to.
“I don’t know,” Penelope admitted, ignoring the way the honesty cut through her defenses. “I don’t know what the answer is. But I know that wanting something real isn’t foolish, Hyacinth. Even when it’s terrifying. Even when it doesn’t fit the plan.”
Hyacinth stared at her. Then, slowly, her composure fractured—not into tears, but into a laugh that was half-sob, raw and startled and real.
“When did you become wise?” she demanded, wiping her eyes with the back of her ruined glove. “You were supposed to be the naive one. The one who believed in love and kept bees and left the practical matters to me.”
“Perhaps I’ve been learning.”
“From whom? Your rake of a husband?” Hyacinth’s gaze sharpened even through her distress, that merciless instinct for observation reasserting itself. “Penelope Hartwell. You’re blushing.”
“I’m not.”
“You absolutely are. Your neck has gone the precise shade of pink it always goes when—” Hyacinth sat forward, her own crisis momentarily abandoned in favour of a far more interesting one. “Oh, good Lord. You have feelings for him. For the Duke.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“You do. I can see it all over your face.” Hyacinth’s mouth fell open. “The woman who wanted nothing but a quiet life and a garden full of bees has fallen for London’s most notorious?—”
“Hyacinth.” Penelope’s voice came out sharper than she intended. “We are discussingyoursituation. Not mine.”
Her friend held her gaze for a long, knowing moment. Then she leaned back in her chair, a ghost of her old smile playing at her lips.
“Very well. My situation.” She picked up the ruined glove and examined it as though it contained the answer to everything. “What do I do?”
Penelope opened her mouth to answer—and found she had nothing to offer that wouldn’t condemn her own heart in the process. Every argument for following feeling over security, every word about choosing what was real over what was safe, would land squarely at her own feet. She could hear her own voice telling Hyacinth to be brave, and beneath it, the quieter question she refused to ask herself:Then why won’t you?
She was spared by a knock at the door. Lottie appeared, Rose balanced on one hip.
“Begging your pardon, Your Grace, but the little one won’t settle. She’s asking for you.”
Penelope rose, grateful for the interruption—then stopped when she noticed where Hyacinth’s gaze had drifted. Through the drawing room window, crossing the gravel drive with a ledger tucked beneath his arm, walked Mr. James Crawford.
Hyacinth’s face went white, then scarlet.
“He works here,” Penelope said softly. “You knew that.”
“I know.” Hyacinth’s voice was barely audible. “That’s rather the problem.”
CHAPTER 18