By now Quin knew exactly what his mother was talking about: his next wife. He approved of both Her Grace’s planning and her expectation of success. His mother organized every aspect of her life—and, often, his as well. The one time he had engaged in spontaneity—a word and an impulse he now regarded with the deepest suspicion—the result had been disastrous.

Thus the need for a next wife. A second wife.

“You shall be married by autumn,” his mother stated.

“I have the utmost confidence that this endeavor, like all those you undertake, will be a success,” he replied, which was no more than the truth.

His mother didn’t flicker an eyelash. Neither of them had time for flattery or frivolous compliments. As his mother had written in her book, The Mirror of Compliments—which rather surprisingly had become a best-selling volume—“A true lady prefers gentle reproof to extravagant compliment.”

It hardly need be said that Her Grace would have been extremely surprised if offered a reproof, gentle or otherwise.

“Once I have found you a wife who is worthy of her position, I shall be happy,” she said now, then added, “What are you working on?”

Quin looked back at his desk. “I am writing a paper on Lagrange’s solution to Bachet’s conjecture regarding the sum of four squares.”

“Didn’t you tell me that Legendre had already improved on Lagrange’s theorem?”

“His proof was incomplete.”

“Ah.” There was a momentary pause, and then the dowager said, “I shall issue an immediate invitation to the chosen young ladies to join us here. After due observation, I shall make a choice. A reasoned choice. There will be no succumbing to light fancy, Tarquin. I think we both agree that your first marriage made patently clear the inadvisability of such behavior.”

Quin inclined his head—but he didn’t entirely agree. His marriage had been inadvisable, surely. Terrible, in some lights (the fact that Evangeline had taken a lover within a few months spoke for itself). Still . . .

“Not in every respect,” he said now, unable to stop himself.

“You are contradicting yourself,” his mother observed.

“My marriage was not a mistake in every respect.” He and his mother lived together quite comfortably, but he was well aware that the household’s serenity was dependent on the fact that he generally took the path of least resistance. When necessary, however, he could be as firm as the dowager.

“Well,” his mother replied, eyeing him. “We must each be the judge of that.”

“I am the judge of my marriage,” Quin stated.

“The question is irrelevant,” she replied, waving her fan as if to brush away an insect. “I shall do my best to steer you in such a way that you shall not fall into the same quagmire. I feel quite exhausted at the mere memory of the tempests, the pique, the constant weeping. One would think that young woman had been raised on the stage.”

“Evangeline—”

“A most improper name for a lady,” his mother interrupted.

According to The Mirror of Compliments, interruption was a cardinal sin. Quin waited a moment, just long enough that the silence in the room stretched to a point. Then he said, “Evangeline was deeply emotional. She suffered from an excess of sentiment and recurring problems with her nerves.”

His mother shot him a beady look. “I trust you are not about to instruct me to speak no ill of the dead, Tarquin.”

“Not a bad precept,” he said, taking his life in his own hands.

“Humph.”

Still, he had made his point. He had no particular objection to allowing his mother to organize the matter of a second wife. He fully realized that he needed an heir. But his first marriage . . .

He chose not to entertain other people’s opinions on the subject. “To return to the matter at hand, while I am certain that the parameters you have formulated are excellent, I have one stipulation as regards the young women you have selected.”

“Indeed. Steig, pay attention.”

Quin glanced at his mother’s assistant, whose quill was at the ready. “The giggles should have worn off.”

His mother nodded. “I shall take that point under advisement.” She turned her head. “Steig, make a note. At the express request of His Grace, I shall devise another test, to determine whether the subject is overly given to giggling and other native signs of innocent enjoyment.”

“In-no-cent en-joy-ment,” Steig muttered, writing frantically.

Quin had a sudden vision of a haughty duchess with a huge ruff, like the faces of his Elizabethan ancestors up in the portrait gallery. “I don’t mind enjoyment,” he clarified. “Just not giggling.”

“I shall dispense with either candidate if she seems likely to indulge in overwrought expressions of pleasure,” his mother said.

Quin could readily picture himself bound by marriage to yet another woman who felt no pleasure in his company. But that wasn’t what his mother meant, he knew.

Besides, she had already left.

Three

In Which the Merits of Virginity and Debauchery

Are Evaluated, and Debauchery Wins

Olivia and Georgiana had scarcely finished their discussion regarding the desirability of peaches over celery when their mother entered the room.

Most women in their forties allow themselves to take on a soft roundness. But, as if in reproach to her unsatisfactory elder daughter, Mrs. Lytton ate like a bird and ruthlessly confined what curves she had in a whalebone corset. Consequently, she looked like a stork with anxious, beady eyes and a particularly feathery head.

Georgiana instantly rose to her feet and curtsied. “Good evening, Mother. How lovely that you pay us a visit.”

“I hate it when you do that,” Olivia put in, pushing herself to a standing position with a little groan. “Lord, my feet hurt. Rupert trampled them at least five or six times.”

“Do what, my dear?” Mrs. Lytton asked, just catching Olivia’s remark as she shut the door behind her.

“Georgie goes all gooey and sweet just for you,” Olivia said, not for the first time.

Her mother’s frown was a miraculous concoction: she managed to express distaste without even twitching her forehead. “As your sister is well aware, ‘A lady’s whole pilgrimage is nothing less than to show the world what is most requisite for a great personage.’ ”

“Show unto the world,” Olivia said, making a feeble gesture toward mutiny. “If you must quote The Mirror of Senseless Stupidity, Mama, you might as well get it right.”

Mrs. Lytton and Georgiana both ignored this unhelpful comment. “You looked exquisite in your plum-colored sarcenet tonight,” Georgiana said, pulling a chair closer to the fireplace and ushering her mother into it, “particularly when you were dancing with Papa. His coat complemented your gown to a turn.”

“Have you heard? He is calling on us tomorrow!” Mrs. Lytton breathed the pronoun as though Rupert were a deity who deigned to enter their mortal dwelling.

“I heard,” Olivia said, watching her sister tuck a small cushion behind their mother’s back.

“You’ll be a duchess by this time tomorrow.” The tremble in Mrs. Lytton’s voice spoke for itself.