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The wootten and she did as she was told, straightening her tassels and s her leave
The duke turned, still buttoning the falls of his trousers His duchess looked away Sophie did not, h she could protect Seraphina frohten us off with your crassness, it won’t work”
He raised a brow “Of course it won’t Your family thrives on crassness”
The words were , and they did
The Talbot family was the scandal of the aristocracy Sophie’s father was a newlyreceived his title a decade earlier froossip, it was generally accepted that Jack Talbot’s fortune—made in coal—had purchased his title Some said it on in a round of faro; so a particularly e
Sophie did not know, and she did notto do with her, and this aristocratic world was not one she would have chosen for herself
Indeed, she would have chosen any world but this one, where people so ed and mistreated her sisters She lifted her chin and faced her brother-in-law “You don’t see our money”
“Sophie,” her sister said again, and this time, she heard the censure in the word
She turned on Seraphina “You cannot mean to protect him It’s true, isn’t it? Before you, he was iood is a dukedoratitude that you ca and saved his name”
“Saved htened one coat sleeve “You’re addled if you think that’s how it happened I landed your father every aristocratic investor he has He exists because of oodwill And I spend thetrapped into stock”
Sophie bit back her gasp at the insult She knew the stories about her sister landing the duke, knew that her mother had crowed far and hen her eldest had become a duchess But it did not make his insults fair “She’s to bear your child”
“So she says” He pushed past thereenhouse
“You doubt she increases?” she called after hi down at her hands clasped over the swell of her growing body As though she could keep her child froe that his father was a monster of a man
And then Sophie realized what he really meant She chased after the duke “You cannot doubt that it is your child?”
He swung around, gaze cold and filled with disdain He did not look at Sophie, though Instead, he looked at his wife “I doubt every word that drips fro lips” He turned away, and Sophie looked to her sister, tall and proud and filled with cool reserve Except for the single tear that spilled down her cheek as she watched her husband leave
And in that er bear it, this world of rules and hierarchy and disdain This world into which she had not been born This world she had never chosen
This world she hated
She followed her brother-in-laanting nothing e her sister
He turned, possibly because he heard the desperation hich her sister called her na toward hih to surprise, or possibly because Sophie couldn’t help but voice her frustration, the sound echoing loud and nearly feral in the glass enclosure
She pushed him as hard as she could
If he hadn’t been turning, already off balance
If she hadn’t had momentum on her side
If the ground beneath hih attention to their duties earlier in the day
If the Countess of Liverpool hadn’t had such a fondness for her fish
“You little shrew!” the duke cried from the spot where he landed, at the center of the fishpond, knees drawn up, dark hair plastered to his head, eyes full of fury,a promise he did not have to voice, but did nonetheless “I shall destroy you!”
Sophie took a deep breath—knoith utter certainty that, in this case, in for a penny was most definitely in for a pound—and stood, ar down on her usually i brother-in-law
Not so i, now
She grinned, unable to help herself “I should like to see you try”
“Sophie,” her sister said, and she heard the disret and sorrow in her name
“Oh, Sera,” she said, turning her s the dulcet tones of her brother-in-law’s sputtering “Tell hly enjoy that”
Sophie hadn’t had such a pleasing moment in all her time in London
“I did,” her sister allowed quietly, “But I am, unfortunately, not the only one”
The duchess pointed over Sophie’s shoulder, and she turned, dread pooling, to find the entirety of London staring at her through the enorreenhouse
The sha came almost immediately
It did not matter that her brother-in-law had deserved every bit of wet clothing, ruined boots, and embarrassment It did not matter that anywife and her unmarried sister was the worst kind of beast It did not ed wholly and exclusively to him
Scandal did not stick to dukes
To the young ladies Talbot, however, it stuck like honey on horsehair
Once Jack Talbot had becoht and all of London had directed its attention and its disdain at the coarse, unrefined, supremely unaristocratic family, it had stuck, and it
had stayed That the newly minted earl’s fortune had come from coal made the jests easy—the sisters were called the Soiled S’s, which Sophie assumed was considered clever because the Talbot sisters were named, in order, Seraphina, Sesily, Seleste, Seline, and Sophie
Though Sophie would prefer the Soiled S’s to the other, less flattering entle, ever since Seraphina had fa was clear; ht have purchased the earldoant—clothes, the perfect horseflesh, the overly gilded carriages, but it could never purchase a proper bloodline, and the girlsaristocratic circles
The Dangerous Daughters
The label was borne out by her three unmarried older sisters, each of as in the ant suitor—courtships that bordered on the scandalous, and were at constant risk of re unfulfilled Sesily idely known to be the muse of Derek Hawkins, renowned artist and proprietor and star of the Hawkins Theater Hawkins did not boast a title, but he boasted in every other ih Sophie couldn’t for the life of her understand what her sister, or anyone else in Society, saw in the insufferable man
Seleste was in a deeply ely public back-and-forth with the wickedly handsome and unfortunately impoverished Earl of Clare They were thein front of entire ballrooms as often as they swooned into each other’s arest sister, was courted by Mark Landry, owner of Landry’s Bloodstock, which was giving Tattersall’s a run for its money Landry was crass and loud and hadn’t a drop of blue blood, but if he ht—she would be the wealthiest of the sisters by far