that you made up your mind for her that she’d be better off without you. You have moments when I think the title has addled your brains, and this is one of them. Your job is to grovel at her feet and beg her for marriage. Do you hear me?”
He rubbed his shoulder absentmindedly because her poking actually hurt. “What if she won’t have me?”
“Then you change her mind. You wait until she has a good look at the better parts of you. You invite her to the castle for a visit and you don’t consign her to the last carriage, but keep her at your side.”
“I didn’t—”
“Yes, you did,” Louisa said. “You went off in the first carriage with that bald woman to whom you’d supposedly offered your hand, a few days after being refused by Ophelia . . . You could scarcely have been more offensive, Hugo. I’m not the most sensitive of beings, but even I would have trouble countenancing that insult.”
“It wasn’t meant as an insult.”
“Your intent is unimportant. I saw her eyes and you hurt her. Now, you learn from that mistake and don’t make it again.”
“I’ll have to talk to Lady Woolhastings.”
“Tomorrow at the dinner party,” his sister said briskly. “I can help, Hugo. It would be best if we could convince her that being Duchess of Lindow would diminish her countenance.”
“I can’t imagine how, given that she decided to be duchess without a proposal,” he said.
“Don’t underestimate me,” she said, grinning at him.
“I never do,” he promised. Then he wound an arm around her shoulder. “If Ophelia marries me, you’ll stay, won’t you?”
“If she wants me.”
“I won’t take her.”
Louisa hooted. “You don’t have her, you arrogant fool! Now I need a restorative sleep because tomorrow morning I promised we would take the children to the Tower.”
“We?” Hugo asked.
His sister just rolled her eyes.
Chapter Thirteen
As it happened, the Penshallow box at the Theatre Royal was directly across from the Lindow box. From Ophelia’s point of view, it couldn’t have been more unfortunate.
She and Maddie arrived in plenty of time. Maddie had cheered up and decided to enjoy her role as a woman in a delicate condition; she fanned herself constantly and entertained her friends with whispered commentary about the trials and tribulations of carrying an heir.
As far as Ophelia could see, there was near-universal acceptance of Maddie’s condition, but she knew it wasn’t enough to merely display Maddie with a cotton roll at her waist.
At the play’s intermission, she surveyed the ladies who crowded the Penshallow box, and selected the worst gossip of them all, Lady Arden, and adroitly drew her to the front of the box, exclaiming that she hadn’t seen the lady for ages.
Once they were cozily seated, Ophelia confided that she had insisted her darling Maddie keep her condition a secret.
“I understand that for the first months,” Lady Arden said, looking faintly skeptical, “but so near to confinement?”
Ophelia flipped open her fan and spoke behind it. “Surely you know that my dearest cousin’s marital relations are stormy.”
“To say the least!” Lady Arden’s eyes brightened.
“Most of London believes that it is due to a lack of passion between herself and her husband,” Ophelia whispered, “but the reverse is true. There is too much emotion between them.”
“Ah,” Lady Arden breathed.
“Her delicate condition makes her so sensitive,” Ophelia confided. “I feared for the life of the babe.”
“Lord Arden likes to tell stories of a time when I behaved in a most unladylike fashion while carrying our second child,” Lady Arden said, apparently won over. “Arden insisted on roast partridge for luncheon over my express command, and I could not abide that odor. I vomited on his shoes. Deliberately, he says.”
“I have persuaded my dearest cousin that she would do best to retire from society after this evening,” Ophelia said. “I certainly don’t want her to lose control of her temper as she did at the Hunt Ball, only due to the emotional storms of the first months of one’s delicate condition. I trust you will pay us a call? She will be resting comfortably at my house.”
“An excellent plan,” Lady Arden said, clearly recalling the way glacé cherries had bounced off Maddie’s husband’s head. “Men simply do not understand how hard it is to manage one’s feelings while carrying a child.”
“Lord Penshallow will visit daily, of course,” Ophelia said.
“Of course,” Lady Arden echoed.
Then she asked precisely the question that Ophelia had been hoping to avoid. “Did you see that the Duke of Lindow is