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Miss Grey lifted her eyebrows. "Ah, you have not heard?" she said, clearly delighted to be ahead of Lady Hertford in gossip for once. She leaned in conspiratorially and said, "That is the newlywed Lady Karlington." Despite all her better instincts, Lady Hertford could not help but recoil at the news and began to stare at the young rider in earnest. "Well now..." she muttered half to herself, "... how ever did that come to pass?"

The sunlight was beginning to slant through the treetops of Hyde Park, their leaves tinged at the edges with deep yellow and rust. Amelie Beauvilliers -- well now she was Amelie Richards, Duchess of Karlington -- fidgeted with the reins of her mare, frustrated by the stilted pace of London's evening promenade. This could hardly be called exercise when she was used to a hearty gallop through the woods surrounding Edgewater. She was mostly unaware of the gossip peddlers surrounding her, though she could feel their eyes on her every step of the way down her path. She could guess that her straddling the horse was likely the cause of some wagging tongues, but despite Mr. Harper's many lessons at Edgewater she never did feel comfortable riding sidesaddle. It made her feel as if she could go tumbling to the ground any moment.

Lady Hertford found she could not take her eyes off the young woman, and at first she supposed her uncouth staring was simply a mark of her shock at the outrageous claims Miss Grey made about Lady Karlington's appearance in Town for the Little Season.

She was the bastard daughter of an earl? Unbelievable.

Said earl managed to will his estate to her? Preposterous.

"No, 'tis true!" Miss Grey insisted. The entailment of Edgewater had expired decades ago and its lord had been free to arrange for its ownership as he pleased.

It was then Lady Hertford realized her gaze was also gripped by its subject's astonishing beauty.

Miss Grey had an extraordinary amount of detail on the whole matter. She knew how many servants the estate kept, and who was a guest at the wedding, and where the Duke and his newfound Duchess were staying in London. If Lady Hertford had ever questioned her decision to hire the woman for this trip, such doubts were now certainly dispelled. She even came to pity Miss Grey somewhat - that a woman as clever and well-mannered as she must adopt the indignity of employment, while this former Mademoiselle Beauvilliers who could not even properly ride a horse trotted along to be mistress of two the grandest households in England... well, it was not to be borne.

The only thing Miss Grey seemed not to know was why the Duke of Karlington had married such a person. Even those city gossips least concerned with whether their chatter was truthful could not speculate a sufficient theory for the match.

The pair rounded a corner where they could no longer see the new Duchess and the old adage proved true as they quickly moved on to other topics. But it would not be long until they were faced with her again, for that evening the ancient Viscount Westonly was to host a dinner.

~~          <>          ~~

Amelie and the Duke – despite now sharing his bed, she still could only think of him as the Duke – had been wed in the small parish church near Edgewater less than two months prior to their appearance in London. They spent their honey month as most do in exhausting travel to all the friends and relatives who could not be present at the wedding, all of whom lived up north in Derbyshire near the vast lands of the Karlington estate. The Duke had seemed terribly excited to show her off to his friends, but at each visit they made, they seemed less and less welcome. Amelie was no stranger to the ton’s discomfort, but in Derbyshire it seemed as though it were not her reputation but her husband’s that was tarnishing his neighbors’ hospitality. Indeed, Amelie thought, she could not blame them. Now that his prize was won, the Duke’s pompous and ridiculous manners seemed only to inflate. He was quick to dismiss the neighbors’ attitudes – he had never liked them much to begin with, and he so rarely stayed at his estate these days, and wouldn’t they much rather be in London anyway. Amelie was sorry to leave behind Derbyshire, believing it to be the most objectively beautiful place she ever saw – objectively, because she knew nothing could ever replace Edgewater in her heart. But London carried its own promises of excitement and interest. She had barely tasted the city’s delights in her lone Season as a tentative heiress, and how many doors must be open to her now as the wife of a Duke!

True to her expectations and even to the Duke’s promises, Amelie found life in London preferable to the country travel that dominated their early weeks of marriage. Here in Town, she found she hardly had to see or speak to the Duke at all. Morning walks and visits to Miss Parsons and Miss Sutton and all her other acquaintances and frequenting her favorite shops and the late afternoon promenade… she could fill her days so easily in London. She only needed to return to the Duke’s townhouse – she felt she could not call it home – to change clothes before dinner.

Nancy, her lady’s maid, greeted her at the door, having quickly grown accustomed to her new mistress’ timetable. They swept up the stairs into Amelie’s chambers where they spent several minutes in hushed conversation masked by the rustling of skirts and shifts and petticoats. The Duke ground his teeth at the noise – just enough for him to know there was something to overhear, but far too low for him to glean any details. All the old ladies in Town and country alike insisted a home needed a feminine touch and now that he had one, he could not take any comfort or pleasure in it.

Amelie drew in a deep breath through her nose before emerging into the hall, draped in cream satin and gauze with deep green and raspberry pink ribbons woven into a lattice around the bodice and in a large swath along the hem of the gown. Nancy had tucked a few little satin rosebuds into her coiffure and rather heavily rouged her cheeks – she simply looked too pale in white without it.

The Duke’s expression darkened – he did not like to see his wife wearing such heavy cosmetic – but they had repeated that argument quite enough lately. He silently offered his arm to escort Amelie to their carriage for dinner, refusing to make eye contact with her.

“You could at least say Good evening,” Amelie noted tartly. “I am your wife.”

The Duke’s jaw set firmly. “Perhaps if you did not take such pains to avoid me during the day, I would have more opportunity to greet you.”

Faced with such direct unpleasantness, both proceeded to bite their tongues and rode in tense silence to Viscount Westonly’s townhouse on the other side of Mayfair.

~~          <>          ~~

In her little village of Grovershire, dinner had always been a simple daily necessity. It only called for grand occasion on Christmas night and in her first formal dinner parties among the ton, Amelie felt overwhelmed and intimidated by all the ceremony and particular etiquette. Many of her early nights at Edgewater, she feigned a headache so she might break bread more casually with Briar in her room. Briar… how she missed her.

There was a brief time where the custom of seating husband and wife apart seemed strange and even cruel to Miss Beauvilliers. Enraptured by the fairy tale of her new life as daughter of an earl, she eagerly imagined a happily ever after with some handsome prince, a separation from whom her romantic heart could not bear. She missed her romantic heart too.

Practicality had never felt so seductive as when Tristan Richards took her hand and asked her to marry him. There were many types of love after all, she reasoned. Love of her grandmother who would be so happy and proud. Love of Mr. Harper whose livelihood would be saved by her retaining control of Edgewater. Love of her future children. Love even of the man she hoped Tristan Richards might become – but of course, he could only be the Duke. Though there were many things he was hiding from her, his true character was not among them.

And so as Amelie and the Duke alighted from his carriage and entered the home of Viscount Westonly, she was deeply grateful that they would be on opposite ends of the table. Her husband would be seated at their host’s side, forced to choose between the sort of lopsided conversation that was inevitable with one so hard of hearing and the pointed questions of Lady Hertford on his recent nuptials. Meanwhile, Amelie, in the absence of a lady of the house, would be paid the unusual compliment of taking the head of the table at its other end. She had so enjoyed being the guest of honor at Almack’s the previous week, even if she did have to dance with the Duke most of the night, so it left her feeling giddy to have her status as not just a newlywed but also a Duchess acknowledged again.

She took it as a sign of that status that so many of the male guests had been jockeying for the opportunity to be seated next to her. She did not realize that all these eager suitors – many of whom had taken little notice of her as Miss Beauvilliers – were either hungry for gossip or, occasionally as in the case of Mr. Chambers, hoping to protect her from prying eyes.

Spirits were high among the men in the parlor, many of whom were slipping shillings on the sly to the butler for without anymore titled guests present, a seat beside Amelie might be up to the luck of the draw. And not one of those men intended for luck to be on someone else’s side that evening. Were they not so unflinchingly polite, there might have been a collective groan when Ernest Sinclaire unexpectedly arrived.

Mr. Sinclaire was such a favorite of Viscount Westonly – of most houses in London, in fact – and held such a fortune that none could hope to compete with his claim to a seat of honor. To add insult to injury, Mr. Sinclaire was always the least interested in having such privileges and tonight would prove no exception.

He had only just arrived in London that night, though perhaps even with more time in Town he would still not have heard all the talk of the evening’s most anticipated guests. Nuances of timing aside, as the company gathered to proceed into the dining room, he was shocked to discover whom he would be escorting.

“Miss Beauvilliers!” he exclaimed, losing his composure for – it seemed to most of the guests close enough to overhear – the first time in his life.

Amelie stared up at Mr. Sinclaire, equally surprised -- though in her case, she was stunned into silence.

Mr. Sinclaire cleared his throat. “Forgive me. Of course, you are Miss Beauvilliers no longer…” he said, unable to bring himself to address her properly by her married title. “I trust your grandmother is in good health.”

“I—I imagine you would be better able to attest to that fact, Mr. Sinclaire. I have not been back to Edgewater since... in several weeks.” Amelie corrected herself mid-sentence to avoid mentioning the wedding, though in the moment she was not sure why.

She drifted into the dining room on Mr. Sinclaire’s arm in a daze, and she did not leave it until the soup was being cleared in favor of the fish.

“I just wish you weren’t going through with this,” Mr. Sinclaire said.

Amelie’s eyes fluttered and she turned her head to the right to look at him. His hair was shorter and he had folded his cravat a bit differently. “I beg your pardon?” she asked, before realizing she was merely lost in the memory of a conversation from months ago. Their last conversation.

“I asked how long you had been in Town,” Mr. Sinclaire – the real, present Mr. Sinclaire – repeated.

“Only about a week,” she replied.

“Ah,” he acknowledged the information and, for the first time, was glad to have Miss Holloway soliciting his attention to one of her inane anecdotes. It was strange to him, and to Amelie, to have a friend who so suddenly became important in his life, equally suddenly vanish from it. To evaporate so quickly that their dinner conversation could not last more than a few sentences.

Amelie was pulled into conversation by the gentleman on her other side, whose name she forgot every time she glanced away, who was terribly eager to hear all about her life in Grovershire and what it was like to see Edgewater for the first time and then have the same experience at Karlington. She was an easy person to draw out and more than once, Ernest found himself watching the pale curve of her neck arch back as she let out a trilling laugh.

Mr. Sinclaire had not attended the wedding. He refused to bear witness to Tristan Richards taking yet another person away from him. He left as soon as the banns were read to sulk by the seaside, taking a long visit to Lyme Regis – as far from Karlington’s lands as he could get – where he vowed to forget Amelie Beauvilliers.