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“Lady Marchwood says he did not leave at his hour, and he always leaves at his hour. And what was the one new thing in that room, pray? A quiet woman in a gray gown, who put a ruined dinner back together for no thanks and then folded herself against a wall.”

Rosalind’s heart gave a strange, unsteady thump, for it could not be true. Could it?

“You are mistaken,” she said. “There is nothing in it. I am six-and-twenty and uncourted, and I am not the sort of woman a viscount looks at.” She lifted her chin. “Whatever he was watching, it was not me. Or if it was, it was the table, the work, the thing that needed doing. Men of that kind do not...” She stopped, for the sentence had nowhere to go.

“Do not what?” Miss Danforth asked.

“Do not notice me,” Rosalind said, and then her wit slipped its lead before she could catch it. “I am very good at not being noticed. I have a great deal of practice, and it is nearly the only thing I do better than my stepsisters.”

It was out before she knew she would say it, dry and quick and entirely her own, the kind of thing she thought a hundred times a day and had not said aloud in years. Miss Danforth’s whole face lit, the laugh arriving before the words were finished, and she pressed Rosalind’s hand and held it, unwilling to let the moment go.

“There she is,” she cried, delighted. “There is the one I came to find. Augusta said you were funny, and I did not half believe her, for people always say their nieces are funny when they only mean they are not dull. You are funny.” She settled back, satisfied. “We are going to do very well, you and I. You will be quiet, and watch the room, and say the wicked true thing under your breath.”

“And you?” Rosalind asked, feeling a smile pull at her own mouth.

“I shall watch you, and catch it, and be loud with it where it can do the most good. Is that not a perfect partnership? I have wanted one for years.”

When the door opened upon Augusta and the tea, the conversation turned, as conversations do, and Rosalind poured with her eyes on the cups and away from Charlotte’s knowing face. But the name sat in her all through the tea and after. James, Viscount Dover. A face by a wall had been given a name at last, and with the name came a thing she did not believe and could not quite set down.

Why should such a man watch her, of all the women in London? And why, when she had been invisible all her life by her own careful design, did some small part of her hope that Charlotte was right?

* * *

Before Rosalind’s second week in London was out, she was made to go and dine with the Marburys, who had opened the house in Grosvenor Street.

That was Augusta’s doing. “We shall not hide from them,” she had said, drawing on her gloves in the hall. “You will go in on my arm, dressed as my niece and not as their housekeeper, and you will let them see that you are under my protection now. We shall learn a great deal by how they take it.” She had looked her niece over once, and nodded. “Chin where I showed you, if you please. Not defiance. Just the right height.”

And so Rosalind came into the Countess of Marbury’s drawing-room at her aunt’s side, in the tired good gown that was still the best she had. Her stomach was a hard knot, but her chin was exactly where it ought to be, and she braced herself as she braced for any difficult household business.

Lord Marbury dined at his club that evening — kept from his own table, Rosalind suspected, by his wife’s arranging of it — and she could not decide whether she was disappointed or relieved by his absence.

Selina was magnificent, of course, coming forward with both hands extended and her smile precisely in place.

“Lady Holt! How good of you to come to us. And Lady Rosalind.” The faintest pause came before the name, and the faintest weight sat upon the title, a hair too much, so that for half a breath it sounded like a thing she was not quite sure of. “My dear, how well you look. London air, I daresay, or only that you are spared the cares of a household at last.” She pressed Rosalind’s hand between both of her own. “I have always said the running of a house ages a woman before her time, have I not, girls? You will feel better for the rest.”

“I am very well, thank you, Lady Marbury,” Rosalind replied, giving her the courtesy exact and even and letting it sit.

“And how the place must miss you!” Selina turned gracefully to the small company already gathered, two or three worthy neighbors from Town, a clergyman, and the daughters, drawing them all into the warm circle of her concern. “You none of you can conceive how this girl kept Marbury. Quite indispensable. The linens, the still-room, the servants.” She spread the praise out like a cloth for all of them to admire. “She has a positive gift for the management of things, has she not, Cassandra? One did not know how a house ran until one watched Lady Rosalind run it.”

“One did not, Mama,” said Cassandra.

She was on the sofa with her skirts arranged, and she did not rise.

“And Lady Rosalind has never wanted to be the front, have you?” Cassandra said to the clergyman, in the tone of a woman admiring a friend’s needlework. “You have always preferred to be of use rather than admired.”

Cassandra waited for the small injury that would tell her the dart had gone home, but Rosalind let her wait, and only then turned to the clergyman at her elbow.

“Lady Marbury keeps a very good table,” she said. “You will dine well tonight, sir, I am sure of it.”

Across the room, Phoebe caught Rosalind’s eye. She hesitated, glanced once toward her mother, and then rose.

“I am glad you came, Lady Rosalind,” she said softly.

Rosalind looked at her in surprise. “Thank you, Phoebe.”

Phoebe glanced toward Selina again, but she did not take the words back.

“Augusta,” said Selina, turning the warmth on, “you are very brave, I must say, to take a girl about Town at this hour of her life. Most would call it past praying for, but then you always did go your own way.” She gave a small laugh, perfectly weighted. “It runs in the family, I think, the going of one’s own way, and Cecily had a great deal of it.” Her head tilted as she studied Rosalind. “Lady Rosalind has the look of her tonight, do you not think? About the eyes. One sees the mother in her, certain evenings, and one wonders where the rest came from.”