rights to interrupt. “Your Grace,” she said, not at all quietly, the words filled with her contempt for this moment, this man, and this world that had given him so much power.
The pair stilled. A pretty blond head popped out from behind his arm, topped with a towering red silk pagoda, gold tassels hanging from its multitude of corners, swinging at her ears. Large blue eyes blinked.
The Duke of Haven did not deign to look at Sophie. “Leave us.”
There was nothing in the world Sophie hated more than the aristocracy.
“Sophie? Mother is looking for you . . . She’s waylaid Captain Culberth on the croquet field, poor man, and she’s swatting him with that enormous fan she insisted on bringing. You should rescue the poor man.”
Sophie closed her eyes at the words, willing them away. Willing their speaker away with them. She whirled around to stop her sister’s advance. “No, Sera—”
“Oh.” Seraphina, Duchess of Haven, née Talbot, came up short as she turned the corner into the copse of potted plants, taking in the scene, her hands flying to her ever-so-slightly-protruding stomach, where the future Duke of Haven grew. “Oh.” Sophie saw shock flash in her sister’s eyes as she took in the scene, followed quickly by sadness, and then cool calm. “Oh,” the Duchess of Haven repeated.
The duke did not move. Did not look at his wife, the mother of his future child. Instead, he pushed one hand into those blond curls and spoke to the crook of his paramour’s neck. “I said, leave us.”
Sophie looked to Seraphina, tall and strong and hiding all the emotions that she must have been feeling. That Sophie couldn’t help but feel with her. She willed her sister to speak. To stand for herself. For her unborn child.
Seraphina turned away.
Sophie couldn’t help herself. “Sera! Will you not say something?” The eldest Talbot sister shook her head, and the resignation in the movement sent anger and indignation rioting through Sophie. She turned on her brother-in-law. “If she won’t, I certainly will. You are disgusting. Pompous, hateful, and loathsome.”
The duke turned a disdainful gaze on her.
“Shall I go on?” Sophie prompted.
The blond in his arms gasped. “Really! Speaking to a duke that way. It’s terribly disrespectful.”
Sophie resisted the urge to tear the stupid hat from the woman’s head and club them both with it. “You’re right. I am the disrespectful one in this situation.”
“Sophie,” Seraphina said softly, and Sophie heard the urgency in the word, the way it urged her away from the scene.
The duke heaved a long-suffering sigh, extricating himself from the lady in question, lowering her skirts and lifting her down from the table where she was perched. “Run along.”
“But—”
“I said, go.”
The woman knew when she was forgotten and she did as she was told, straightening her tassels and smoothing her skirts before taking her leave.
The duke turned, still buttoning the falls of his trousers. His duchess looked away. Sophie did not, moving in front of her sister, as though she could protect Seraphina from this horrible man she’d married. “If you think to frighten us off with your crassness, it won’t work.”
He raised a brow. “Of course it won’t. Your family thrives on crassness.”
The words were meant to sting, and they did.
The Talbot family was the scandal of the aristocracy. Sophie’s father was a newly minted earl, having received his title a decade earlier from the then King. Though her father had never confirmed the gossip, it was generally accepted that Jack Talbot’s fortune—made in coal—had purchased his title. Some said it was won in a round of faro; some said it was payment for the earl assuming a particularly embarrassing debt belonging to the King.
Sophie did not know, and she did not much care. After all, her father’s title had nothing to do with her, and this aristocratic world was not one she would have chosen for herself.
Indeed, she would have chosen any world but this one, where people so misjudged and mistreated her sisters. She lifted her chin and faced her brother-in-law. “You don’t seem to mind spending our money.”
“Sophie,” her sister said again, and this time, she heard the censure in the word.
She turned on Seraphina. “You cannot mean to protect him. It’s true, isn’t it? Before you, he was impoverished. What good is a dukedom if it’s in shambles? He should be on his knees in gratitude that you came along and saved his name.”
“Saved my name, did she?” The duke straightened one coat sleeve. “You’re addled if