were also Rye’s young children to be considered. Charlotte desperately wanted children, but had been proven barren by her late husband. Now she would have the chance to be a stepmother.
“Oh, I am so happy,” Lady Bearsden exclaimed through her tears. “And everyone must know about it!” Then she turned on her heel and rushed off to do just that.
Charlotte laughed. “I begged her to let me tell you first. Though she nearly expired from the quarter of an hour’s delay.”
“Then you proposed this evening?” I asked Rye.
He nodded and gazed down at Charlotte with such tenderness that I felt a catch in my throat. “Truth be told, I’ve wanted to ask her for weeks, but well . . . I couldn’t screw up the courage until tonight.” He glanced down at his slashed velvet doublet. “Perhaps it was the costume. But I think it was the gleam in her eyes.”
I knew Rye would make an excellent husband, for I’d already witnessed it. I hadn’t known his first wife, Mary, well as I’d been wed to Sir Anthony Darby for much of their marriage, and he had kept me largely from my family. But when I had seen Rye and Mary together, I could tell how content they were because, in stark contrast, I was so miserable. When Mary died, Rye had been devastated. For a time, I’d feared he might never recover. But his meeting Charlotte at my and Gage’s wedding had changed that.
“Congratulations, Rye,” I told him, taking his gloved hand in mine as Gage offered Charlotte similar felicitations. “I couldn’t be happier. I honestly couldn’t.”
His eyes spoke the words I knew he couldn’t say aloud. “Thank you, Kiera.”
“Are you engaged to be married, then?” Alana asked soon after she and Trevor had returned from the dance floor.
“Yes,” Rye replied with an amused smile.
“I knew it!” she declared with relish.
“Yes, dear, but ye needn’t shout it to the entire ballroom,” Philip chided almost distractedly as he joined us. His face beneath the powder and face patch was strained, and he kept glancing across the room as if searching for someone.
“I needn’t, but perhaps I wished to,” Alana countered, wrinkling her nose.
I threaded my arm through Philip’s, gliding my fingers over the coat of fine pale blue silk. Lace ruffles dangled from his shirt cuffs and spilled through his embroidered waistcoat down the center of his chest. Dandified and far from au courant this style of dress might be, but all the same, my brother-in-law looked rather magnificent.
“Surely you mean to wish them well,” I prompted, wondering if it was the drink which had allowed his Highland accent to slip and made him speak so brusquely.
He blinked down at me before turning to Rye and Charlotte with a sheepish smile. “Yes, o’ course. My apologies. I do wish to heartily congratulate ye. You are a fortunate man, Mallery.”
Philip was the most courteous gentleman I knew, and yet I read in his eyes that his thoughts were still not focused entirely on the newly engaged couple. Whatever preoccupied him was no small matter.
As if to confirm this, his gaze shifted to meet mine. “Might I steal Kiera and Gage away from ye for a moment?”
Gage’s eyebrows arched in mutual curiosity as we moved toward one of the pillars, leaving Charlotte and Rye to spread their happy news to others.
“What’s this about?” Alana asked her husband.
He frowned, his hand pressing against the breast of his coat. “I received a rather . . . presumptuous note from a . . . a lady here this evenin’.” He swallowed, seeming to struggle to form the words. “Askin’ me to meet her . . . elsewhere.”
Alana’s eyes flashed. “Who?”
“I’d rather not say . . .”
“Who?”
“It might not be what it seems . . .”
“Who?!” she demanded in a dangerous voice.
But I grasped his difficulty almost immediately. “You’re wondering if it truly came from this lady or if it’s someone else’s idea of a jest.”
He exhaled, relieved at my deducing the matter so succinctly. “Aye.” His brow furrowed. “I mean, clearly . . .” he gestured to his clothes “. . . I’m happy to cooperate in this evening’s mayhem. But I draw the line at arrangin’ clandestine meetings wi’ a woman who isna my wife.”
My sister’s gaze softened at this pronouncement, and she stepped closer to him, a spark in her eyes. “No interest?”
Philip stared down at her as if she’d grown two heads. “O’ course not. Dinna be daft.” All the same, he