Free In the Arms of a Marquess by Katharine Ashe

nursery. Her sister stood at the door, garbed in a night rail, a thick chestnut braid trailing down her back. Tavy smiled at the bundle of linen in the crib then the bundle of new-mother nerves leaning as far into the darkened chamber as possible without crossing the threshold. She stole up beside Alethea and curled an arm around her sister’s soft waist.
    “You cannot tear yourself away, can you?” she whispered.
    Alethea leaned her cheek on Tavy’s shoulder.
    “It is like I felt about St. John at the beginning. But now he and I are so well known to one another, I feel him with me even when he is absent.”
    Tavy’s throat tightened. “Jacob is so new. Your love is only just beginning.”
    “New and enormous and unsteady, and yet so certain. It is like falling in love all over again, but different.”
    Tavy could not speak. Emotion pressed at her chest, thick and hard.
    Her sister lifted her head. “Octavia, are you unwell?”
    “I am fine. Truly.”
    Alethea’s brow creased. “How was your outing to the museum with Lord Crispin today?”
    “Quite pleasant.” She barely recalled it. A single dance had erased all else. “He is a charming companion.”
    “I daresay.” Her sister’s tone led, but Tavy would not follow. After a moment Alethea turned her regard back into the nursery. “St. John has received a rather singular invitation.”
    “Singular?”
    “The Marquess of Doreé is hosting a shooting party at Fellsbourne in several days and has invited St. John.”
    Tavy’s heart turned about.
    “I suppose it is about time,” she said with impressive steadiness, “after the way Lady Doreé ignored you for so many years when she lived right next door. Perhaps the marquess is trying to make up for their rudeness.”
    Alethea frowned. “You know it was nothing of the sort.”
    Tavy knew now, although she hadn’t always. High-caste native women never socialized with the English in Madras, no matter whom they had once been married to and what name they bore. The community of proprietors of the Company and their wives was an intimate one, but it did not embrace Indian women, even ladies.
    “Then what is so singular about the invitation?”
    “Lord Doreé never entertains, and he is only peripherally involved in the Company, really. But this must be a Company gathering. He and St. John are well enough acquainted, of course, the number of proprietors of secure means and title as small as it is. Still, we have never socialized with him.”
    “Never?”
    “Some years ago, before we joined you in India, we did invite him to a dinner party or two, but he declined our invitations.”
    Of course he did. “Perhaps he is an eccentric. They say very wealthy men can be peculiar.”
    “Yes.” Alethea cast her a sidelong glance. “They say that about my husband as well.”
    “But you don’t care a whit about it. Neither does St. John. Perhaps Lord Doreé is the same.” Tavy tried to smile, but her lips quivered. She had never spoken of him aloud before, except that one morning, to her aunt.
    “Perhaps,” Alethea considered.
    “He was at Lady Ashford’s party tonight.”
    Alethea’s head came around. “Really? St. John and I left early, of course. Did you—”
    “We spoke.”
    “Good heavens. What is he like?”
    “He was civil.” And beautiful. And confusing. And everything she had feared. And she could barely breathe thinking of it.
    “St. John says he seems a perfectly unexceptionable person, despite his great fortune and recluse ways. But you know, it is a trial to try to wrest detailed commentary from my husband. He does not see people in quite the same way most do.” Alethea shrugged and smiled, her eyes tender.
    “St. John is a good man.” Tavy squeezed her sister’s hand. “And isn’t it lovely that you can remain at home happily with me and Jacob while he goes to discover the mystery of this shooting party?”
    “There is the trouble. I was included in the invitation.”
    “To a