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“Mummy, no one would blame you if you retired for the evening. It’s after midnight.”
“Goodness, Thomas, no. I could never defy convention in that way. I’m the hostess of this event.”
“You are, but I shall make excuses if you’d like.”
She shook her head. “I’m perfectly fine. I don’t need to be doted on. There are still several hours to go. Have you gotten enough to eat?”
“Mummy,” Thomas laughed. “Has there ever been a time when I have not gotten enough to eat?”
Lady Ashford laughed. “Between you and Lily, your father and I could have exhausted our coffers purchasing food.”
Lily, who was standing within earshot, walked toward them with her husband. “Mummy, Thomas,” she said. “This ball is utterly fabulous.”
“I echo my wife’s sentiments,” the duke said. “I don’t think the lovely duchess and I could have put together a better ball for the opening of the season.” He turned directly to Thomas, his eyebrows bouncing. “Have you spied any young ladies who are to your liking?”
Thomas resisted rolling his eyes once more. “For the love of all that is holy, is everyone determined that I take a wife tonight?”
“Well,” the duke—Daniel—said, “all I can tell you is that at the first ball of the season at my estate five years past, I certainly found mine.”
Lily gave him a good-natured punch on his upper arm. Thomas couldn’t help laughing. His sister hadn’t changed a bit, and he wouldn’t have her any other way. It was clear her husband shared that sentiment.
“I suppose you know how she fought us on that one,” Thomas said.
The duke laughed, the skin around his green eyes crinkling. “Do I ever. She certainly made me pay for it, but it was all well worth it, wasn’t it, love?”
“Daniel, my love,” Lily said, “you know I had no intention of ever marrying, but now? My life with you is everything I could have ever dreamed of and more.”
Daniel took Lily’s hand, his gaze fixed on her lovely face. “In that case, dearest wife, would you please join me on the dance floor?”
“I never want to dance with anyone else,” Lily said.
Lily and the duke walked to the dance floor just as the orchestra began to play a quadrille.
“They are so lovely together,” Lady Ashford said. “When I think about how Lily fought him at first…”
“Lybrook is a good man.” Thomas laughed lightly. “He’s always been a good man, even when he was out chasing strumpets before he became the duke.”
“Thomas, do not speak of him in that way.”
“Mummy, we all know the truth of it. To say Lily tamed him is an understatement. And he tamed her as well. I can’t imagine that any other person could have dealt with either of them.”
Lady Ashford laughed at that. “I believe you may be right, Thomas. And then there’s our Rose, so happy with her commoner, who turned out not to be a commoner after all.”
One mention of Rose and her husband sent Thomas’s thoughts reeling to Tricia once more. He gazed around the ballroom once again, but he could not catch a glimpse of her.
“Mummy, have you seen Lady Patricia?”
“When I returned to the ballroom, she was speaking with Rose and Cameron.” Lady Ashford glanced over to her younger daughter and her husband. “She doesn’t seem to be there now, though.”
“I wonder where she went.”
“Why are you asking?” Lady Ashford asked. “Lady Clementine isn’t here either, so she’s probably with her.”
A sigh of relief escaped Thomas’s throat. Perhaps Lady Clementine and Tricia had gone to bed.
A bit early, to be sure, but they weren’t born to this. They were still probably not used to dancing until the wee hours of the morning.
But then, out of the corner of his eye, he spied Lady Clementine. She was a handsome woman with black hair much like Tricia’s.
