Despite finding Hugh’s friends much less daunting than she’d feared, Jane was uneasy about coping with Caro, Helena and Fenella on her own. It wasn’t just that she felt like an outsider in a group of women who were such close and long-term friends. She was afraid that now the men had gone, the ladies might bring up the one name that had hovered, resonant because unspoken, all evening.

Damn it, she didn’t want to talk about Morwenna. In fact, she’d be overjoyed if the unknown but clearly peerless Mrs. Nash sank into a bog, never to be seen again.

Even as these thoughts arose, she knew they were unworthy. But that didn’t mean she intended to spend her first night out in London, listening to how wonderful Morwenna was and how she’d broken Hugh’s heart.

Once everyone found their places around the fire, she pre-empted the conversation before it could veer toward Hugh’s lost love. “Helena, I’d love to know the name of your modiste. I adore that dress, and I’ll need a new wardrobe if Hugh’s planning to join the social whirl.”

Helena smiled at Jane from where she sat on the sofa near the window. She was drinking port, while Fenella had served tea to everyone else. Jane suffered a moment’s curiosity as to why Caro didn’t play hostess in her own home, but didn’t know these women well enough to ask. “It’s natural that he wants to show off his new bride.”

How Jane wished she merited showing off. Then she reminded herself that she’d renounced self-pity. Since she’d discovered her husband was mad for her, her confidence had advanced in leaps and bounds. It was forgivable to feel a little wobbly here, because of Morwenna’s ghost and because she hated what she was wearing, but now was the time to put her nerves away.

“Then I need something better than this.” She glanced down at the wasp dress, which created a vile clash with her chair’s orange and green striped upholstery. “My sister Susan says it’s the last word in style, but I don’t think it suits me at all.”

“Your sister is Lady Bacon, isn’t she?” Caro asked from her place beside Helena on the sofa. She tactfully avoided remarking on the dress, Jane noted.

Helena frowned. “I remember your sister made a great splash when she was introduced to London.”

Wry fondness curved Jane’s lips. “She’s always been the beauty in the family.”

“I wouldn’t say that’s true, Jane.” Fenella subjected her to a thorough inspection. “You’re lovely, although in a very different style. No wonder Garson is so besotted.”

Jane stifled a snort of derisive laughter. Her husband might want her, but nobody in their right mind would believe his feelings extended past that. Still, Fenella was generous to try to make her feel better.

“You are pretty,” Caro said, saving Jane from summoning a response to Fenella’s remark that combined discretion and truth. An impossible task, she couldn’t help thinking. “But a different color might work better, if you don’t mind my saying.”

“I don’t mind at all.” Jane only just stopped herself from declaring that she could pass as an insect. “I already told you I don’t like this dress.”

“It’s not the color.” Helena also studied her, an almost scientific light in her bright, black eyes. “With your spectacular hair, that golden yellow could be wonderful. The trimming is too fussy. By the way, whoever told you to put topazes with that ensemble was a genius.”

Jane felt a warm glow. It was the first time she’d worn any of the Garson jewels. This morning, Hugh had produced several sets for her to choose from, including an elaborate diamond and emerald parure that must be worth a king’s ransom. But her instinct was to select something simpler for a quiet dinner among friends, no matter how significant this occasion might be for her. She’d almost gone for a magnificent string of pearls, but had decided against them, perhaps because pearls were linked to tears.

Her marriage didn’t need anything more working against it.

“Please, I’m happy to take any advice you can give me.”

“I’ll do better than that,” Helena said. “If you’re free tomorrow, I’ll take you to my modiste, then my milliner.”

Caro smiled. “That’s a major compliment, Jane. Helena doesn’t hand out fashion advice willy-nilly.”

Helena cast her friend a dismissive glance. “As if you need my advice.”

“I’d take it if you gave it,” Caro retorted. “The way you dress always makes me green with envy.”

“Green’s not your color.”

“Ha ha,” Caro said with good-natured sarcasm. “If you were any sharper, you’d cut yourself.”

“They’re very fond of one another, Jane,” Fenella said gently. “Pay no attention to their bickering. It’s a sign they feel comfortable with you. Out in public, Caro and Helena behave themselves. Mostly.”

“We’re the best of friends,” Caro said, standing and drifting across to the fire.

Jane could see that. There was a bond between all three women that she could almost touch. She felt a surge of envy. She’d never had a close woman friend. Susan was too much older—and much as Jane hated to admit it, too self-centered. How odd to realize that the nearest she’d ever come to this sort of relationship was her marriage. Although given the complications of desire and Hugh’s love for Morwenna, she wouldn’t precisely call that a friendship either.

“Who made the dresses for your season?” Helena asked.

“I didn’t have a season,” Jane admitted.

“Why on earth not?” Caro flung one hand out, her delicate cup narrowly missing the edge of the marble mantelpiece. Perhaps Jane had her answer as to why tranquil Fenella presided over the tea tray. “Your sister did.”

“Yes, well, things were different for Susan.”

“Why?”

“Caro, Jane’s only just met us,” Fenella said in soft reproof. “Perhaps she doesn’t want to give us her life story.”

Caro made an unimpressed sound. “That’s how you find out about people. You ask questions.”

“Indeed, but people don’t have to answer.”

“I’m sure Jane can tell me that herself, if she feels that way.” She paused. “Anyway, I haven’t just met her. I went to her wedding.”

Despite feeling uncomfortable at the interest in her life, Jane couldn’t contain a giggle when Helena rolled her eyes. “In that case, there should be no secrets between you.”

“There was a season planned for me,” Jane said, surprised that she didn’t mind talking about this with people she’d just met. “But my father fell ill, and I had to stay home to care for him. I’ve spent the last ten years buried in darkest Dorset. The local farmers don’t give a fig if my gowns are the dernier cri. They just want to talk to someone who knows how to run the estate.”

“Didn’t you long for London?” Caro asked. “When my first husband was alive, I was mired in the depths of the country, and I nearly went mad.”

“Needs must.” Jane set her cup on a side table. How unexpected to discover that this sparkling, sophisticated creature had been trapped, too. “Someone had to take the reins. In the early days, we hoped my father might recover, but it wasn’t to be.”

“Jane, I’m sorry,” Fenella said. “It sounds like you’ve had a sad time of it.”

She smothered a pang of grief for her father and the way he’d let himself fade away. After her mother’s death, his life had started to unravel, ending in a long, wasting illness. When she was a child, he’d been a vital, fulfilled man. “Managing the estate was interesting, and I was glad to be useful.”

“But it wasn’t much fun, I’ll wager,” Helena said.

“Fun? No, that’s not exactly how I’d describe it.”

“Now Garson has brought you to London, and you’ve fallen into our clutches,” Caro said with another reckless swoop of the teacup. “Nobody knows how to have fun better than a Dashing Widow.”

“A Dashing Widow?”

“That’s what we called ourselves when we came out of mourning for our first husbands.” With delicate precision, Fenella placed her cup on the tray. It still seemed unlikely that she was married to huge, bluff Anthony Townsend. “We decided we were sick of moping about, and it was time to take society by storm. None of us had the least notion of marrying again.”

“No, we were positively set against the idea,” Helena said, with a sardonic twist of her lips. “My first husband was a rake and a wastrel. I swore I’d never put myself at a man’s mercy again.”

“And while my first husband was a good, steady, reliable man, he only thought about farming. I was so bored, cooped up in muddy Lincolnshire with him, I went into a decline,” Caro said. “When I finished my year of mourning, my plan was to dance and flirt, and take lovers, and live for giddy pleasure. Marriage meant going back to prison.”

“Yet you both married—and you seem very happy,” Jane said.

“We’re happy, all right.” The formidable Helena looked almost sentimental. “And we were much luckier with our choices, the second time around.”

“Luck?” Caro said. “Luck had nothing to do with it. We were clever enough to know Silas and West were the ones for us.”

“Even if it took you far too long to see that,” Helena said. “I thought unrequited love would finish my poor brother off, before you finally agreed to take him on. His hangdog looks were becoming unbearable. If self-pity didn’t kill him, I vow I would have.”

“I didn’t marry Silas just to save you a bit of annoyance,” Caro retorted.

A smile of surprising sweetness curved Helena’s lips. “No, you married him because you love him too much to live without him. I married West for the same reason.”

“Love is a sneaky devil,” Caro said. “Fen, you’d better speak up, or Jane will imagine you don’t love Anthony.”

Jane was well aware of Fenella’s reticence while Caro and Helena shared their surprising stories. On first meeting, she’d assumed these women had always had the world at their feet. Now reading between the lines, she saw that they’d all had their battles to fight before they attained their present contentment.

“Of course I love Anthony,” Fenella said impatiently. “He gave me a new lease of life.”

Jane knew what it was like to shrink from exposing fragile feelings to the light. “You don’t have to tell me, Fenella, if it’s difficult for you.”

Fenella’s smile contained an ocean of sadness. “My story is quite different from Caro and Hel’s. As girls, they wed men unworthy of them. I didn’t. My first husband Henry died a hero at Waterloo. Losing him broke my heart, so I was determined to retire from the world and live only for my son Brandon. I was sure I’d never love again.”

“But we dragged you back into the world,” Caro said.

“Yes, you did.”

“And Anthony dragged you back to life. I can still remember how astounded we were, when you announced that you intended to marry him, despite only knowing him for a couple of weeks.”

Fenella’s smile turned brilliant, and with a shock, Jane saw that she was as besotted with her big brute of a husband as Caro and Helena were with theirs. “I fell in love at first sight, but because the feeling was so different from what I had with Henry, it took me a little while to recognize what had happened. In many ways, Henry and Anthony are poles apart. For all his bravery as a soldier, Henry was gentle and self-effacing. Whereas Anthony is…”

“A force of nature,” Helena said promptly.

“He is at that.” When Fenella looked like a cat at a cream pot, Jane laughed.

She couldn’t help contrasting Fenella’s situation with her own. Fenella was proof that it was possible to love again. Did this mean that one day Hugh’s devotion to Morwenna might waver? Was Jane being a jealous cow, to wish that it would?

“So you see, Jane, we’re all victims to love’s vagaries,” Caro said. “All our plans went awry, and we ended up leading lives we’d never imagined.”

That was true about Jane’s plans, too. She’d never pictured becoming Lady Garson. And while she’d foresworn love when she married Hugh, she couldn’t quash a pang of envy at the happiness her new friends had found in their marriages.