Page 36 of The Duke’s Caught Bride

“I heard she drugged her.” Lady Ashton’s tone made it clear that she quite enjoyed this shocking news. “Though no one is quite certain of the method. They say that Lady Rachel was insensible by the time the carriage arrived, and Lady Alice simply stepped into her place.”

Alice held very still and listened to two women she had never met dismantle her life as casually as seamstresses unpicking a hem.

“It hardly matters how she managed it.” Mrs. Forsythe glanced across the room toward the window where Kenneth stood speaking with Harcourt. “The result is the same. Bearmoor needed a wife. The girl needed a husband. Lady Rachel was merely the obstacle, and obstacles have a way of disappearing when there is sufficient motivation.”

“Sufficient motivation.” Lady Ashton’s laugh was brief, a single exhale through her nose. “My dear, look at her. No duke in England would choose that girl if her sister were standing beside her. Lady Rachel was the Diamond of the Season. Slender, accomplished, exquisite. And the new Duchess is…” She paused, allowing the silence to perform the cruelty her vocabulary was too polished to deliver directly. “Well, she was available. That seems to have been her primary qualification.”

They moved away. Their conversation continued in the diminishing register of women transitioning to a more entertaining subject, and within moments Alice could no longer distinguish their words from the general murmur of the room.

She stood at the punch table. Her glass sat untouched on the linen. Her hand, she noted with distant interest, was steady.

She had heard worse. Her father had said worse on the morning of Rachel’s first Season, when Alice had appeared in the parlor wearing a gown let out twice that still stretched taut across her torso.

You will stand behind your sister. Speak only when spoken to. Do not draw attention.

She had stood behind Rachel for three Seasons and learned to read the language of omission: her value resided not in what she possessed but in what she lacked.

She picked up her glass and crossed toward the bay window, where Lady Harcourt was describing an orchid she had imported from the West Indies at considerable expense.

“Your Grace.” A woman she did not recognize intercepted her near the sideboard. Middle-aged, handsome, dressed in dove-grey silk. “Mrs. Pemberton. I believe we have not been introduced.” Mrs. Pemberton’s smile was wide and warm but did not reach her eyes. “I must confess, I have been dying to meet you. The whole county has talked of little else.”

“I hardly believe my life is that interesting,” Alice replied.

Mrs. Pemberton laughed. “How delightfully modest. Though there are those who believe you authored this plot yourself. A bold stroke, if so. Not every woman would have the nerve.”

“I can assure you that the circumstances of my marriage were entirely unplanned. I did not scheme, and I did not engineer my sister’s departure. If you will forgive me, I believe the orchids require my attention.”

Alice left her by the sideboard and joined Lady Harcourt’s circle, where the conversation at least confined itself to horticulture.

The dinner gong rang at half past seven.

Alice took Kenneth’s arm for the procession into the dining room. His hand covered hers on his sleeve, and the warmth of his palm steadied her more than she cared to admit.

“You survived,” he said, low enough that only she could hear.

“Barely.” She kept facing ahead. “Your neighbors are charming. Several of them believe I orchestrated my sister’s abduction to secure the title.”

His hand pressed harder against hers. “Who said this?”

“It does not matter.”

“It matters to me.”

She did not answer.

The dining room opened before them. Place cards directed the guests to their seats. Alice found hers midway down the table. Harcourt had seated her between the retired naval captain and Mrs. Forsythe.

The irony was not lost on her.

“Your Grace! Capital.” The naval captain turned to her with the full force of his attention, which was considerable. “Tell me, does Bearmoor still keep the coverts along the east boundary? I spent a weekend there in his father’s time. Bagged fourteen pheasant before luncheon.”

“The coverts remain, yes.” Alice unfolded her napkin across her lap. “Though I understand the head keeper has shifted the main drives further north since your visit. The lower woods flooded two winters ago, and the birds never fully returned.”

“Flooded! Criminal neglect of drainage, no doubt. In my day, we maintained the ditches quarterly. Quarterly! None of this modern business of letting nature take its course. Nature’s course is chaos, Your Grace. Always has been.”

“I rather think the pheasant prefer it,” Alice said. “Our keeper at Peltbury used to say that a bird raised in tidy woodland has no instinct left. He let the bracken grow wild along the south hedgerow, and his coveys were the strongest in the county.”

The captain frowned, as though the notion of a woman holding opinions on game management required recalibration of his entire worldview. “Your father’s keeper permitted you on his rounds?”