Free The Bridgertons Happily Ever After by Julia Quinn

extended visit. London was hot and sticky and rather smelly in the summer, and a sojourn in the country seemed just the thing. Besides, she had not seen either of her godsons in several months, and she had been aghast when Sophie had written to say that Alexander had already begun to lose some of his baby fat.
    Oh, he was just the most squeezable, adorable thing. She had to go see him before he grew too thin. She simply had to.
    And it would be nice to see Sophie, too. She’d written that she was still feeling a bit weak, and Posy did like to be a help.
    A few days into the visit, she and Sophie were taking tea, and talk turned, as it occasionally did, to Araminta and Rosamund, whom Posy occasionally bumped into in London. After over a year of silence, her mother finally had begun to acknowledge her, but even so, conversation was brief and stilted. Which, Posy had decided, was for the best. Her mother might have had nothing to say to her, but she didn’t have anything to say to her mother, either.
    As far as epiphanies went, it had been rather liberating.
    “I saw her outside the milliner,” Posy said, fixing her tea just the way she liked it, with extra milk and no sugar. “She’d just come down the steps, and I couldn’t avoid her, and then I realized I didn’t want to avoid her. Not that I wished to speak with her, of course.” She took a sip. “Rather, I didn’t wish to expend the energy needed to hide.”
    Sophie nodded approvingly.
    “And then we spoke, and said nothing, really, although she did manage to get in one of her clever little insults.”
    “I hate that.”
    “I know. She’s so good at it.”
    “It’s a talent,” Sophie remarked. “Not a good one, but a talent nonetheless.”
    “Well,” Posy continued, “I must say, I was rather mature about the entire encounter. I let her say what she wished, and then I bid her goodbye. And then I had the most amazing realization.”
    “What is that?”
    Posy gave a smile. “I like myself.”
    “Well, of course you do,” Sophie said, blinking with confusion.
    “No, no, you don’t understand,” Posy said. It was strange, because Sophie ought to have understood perfectly. She was the only person in the world who knew what it meant to live as Araminta’s unfavored child. But there was something so sunny about Sophie. There always had been. Even when Araminta treated her as a virtual slave, Sophie had never seemed beaten. There had always been a singular spirit to her, a sparkle. It wasn’t defiance; Sophie was the least defiant person Posy knew, except perhaps for herself.
    Not defiance . . . resilience. Yes, that was it exactly.
    At any rate, Sophie ought to have understood what Posy had meant, but she didn’t, so Posy said, “I didn’t always like myself. And why should I have done? My own mother didn’t like me.”
    “Oh, Posy,” Sophie said, her eyes brimming with tears, “you mustn’t—”
    “No, no,” Posy said good-naturedly. “Don’t think anything of it. It doesn’t bother me.”
    Sophie just looked at her.
    “Well, not anymore,” Posy amended. She eyed the plate of biscuits sitting on the table between them. She really oughtn’t to eat one. She’d had three, and she wanted three more, so maybe that meant that if she had one, she was really abstaining from two . . .
    She twiddled her fingers against her leg. Probably she shouldn’t have one. Probably she should leave them for Sophie, who had just had a baby and needed to regain her strength. Although Sophie did look perfectly recovered, and little Alexander was already four months old . . .
    “Posy?”
    She looked up.
    “Is something amiss?”
    Posy gave a little shrug. “I can’t decide whether I wish to eat a biscuit.”
    Sophie blinked. “A biscuit? Really?”
    “There are at least two reasons why I should not, and probably more than that.” She paused, frowning.
    “You looked quite serious,” Sophie remarked. “Almost as if you were conjugating