relinquish estates, and wealth, and prestige? Pfft.”
Footsteps interrupted Sylvia’s telling, and Lila and her sister looked to the front of the parlor.
The young nursemaid, Pamela, came forward with Vallen in her arms. “The master has awakened from his nap, my lady.”
“I see that.” Sylvia tossed down her papers, the gossip forgotten. And her eyes lit as she jumped to her feet and accepted the precious babe from the nursemaid. “There you are, my prince.” Dismissing the maid, Sylvia claimed a spot on the floor, and then stretching out on her back in a way that would have scandalized their mother, she held Vallen up. “I cannot even imagine,” Lila’s sister said distantly, lost in her own thoughts. “To lose one’s child.”
“Don’t think of it,” Lila said automatically. It was a feat she herself had become adept at, burying unwanted memories. Oh, they were still there, but it was a matter of learning how to shut them out before they . . .
“And why should we not think of it?” her sister shot back. Sylvia struggled up into a seated position. “This isn’t just gossip. By the newspapers, all the ton is concerned about is mysterious, lost heirs coming back from the dead and taking that which is theirs.” Fire flashed in her soft blue eyes, sparking more emotion in them than Lila recalled since before her brother-in-law’s tragic death. “That’s all these papers write about and worry after. There was an earl, and now a duke. They’d shut their doors to this man because they see him as a threat to their claims. Shut them out, and keep one’s power. Disgusting, the lot of them.”
Vallen wailed, and Sylvia immediately adjusted her hold upon the babe, smoothing his back and whispering away his upset until he’d settled comfortably into her arms.
Lila couldn’t share the same surprise her sister did. She’d learned long ago who the peerage truly was.
Despite her noble upbringing, she’d witnessed firsthand the lengths to which those in power would go to keep the masses down. In their hungering to keep that power, they’d even step upon the backs of the ladies who made up their ranks. And because of it, she didn’t want a bloody thing to do with them. She didn’t want to reenter their world, as her family was so eager for her to do. As Sylvia herself wished to. Not just because of her fear, but rather for the plain reason that she didn’t want to be part of that ruthless existence.
Lila knew now that the ease which she’d felt in the rookeries, and in paying her visit more than two years ago to Clara in East London, had been a product of her feeling a greater comfort amongst those strangers.
Even as Hugh had seen Lila as an outsider, there was an honesty in being with him and being part of a place so raw that a person didn’t have to live in the glittering world of the ton, iced in a veneer of false civility. And ironically, it was a world Hugh had taken relish in reminding her she didn’t belong to.
Another set of footfalls came, the firm military-march ones very much belonging to Sylvia’s butler, Mansfield.
Mansfield, who was always composed and in perfect control, filled the doorway, his cheeks flushed.
“Good afternoon, Mansf—”
“You have a visitor, my lady,” he blurted.
“A . . . visitor?” From where she knelt on the floor with Vallen, her elder sister set a small wood horse to rocking. The baby erupted into a great big giggle that proved contagious, and Lila found herself smiling. “My mother, brother, and his wife are not due back—”
“Ahem. It is not the dowager countess or His Lordship. And . . . it is not for you, my lady, but rather”—Mansfield homed his gaze in on Lila—“for you.”
Annalee.
“You should see her,” Sylvia murmured, following Lila’s thoughts.
The butler cleared his throat. “If I may? It is not Lady Annalee.” Coming forward with a silver tray in hand, he held that gleaming article before Lila. No one aside from Annalee visited her. She’d been removed from society so long that her name had ceased to be mentioned in the gossip columns, a detail she’d overheard her mother giving thanks for some years back.
Feeling her sister’s eyes on her, Lila reached reluctant fingers toward an ivory card on the tray.
She puzzled her brow. The Duke of Wingate? Lila stared at the thick calling card emblazoned with the unfamiliar name. “I don’t know a Duke of Wingate.”
Her sister