“So tell me, my dears,” Eleanor said, as she poured tea for the two Belvoir girls, “what do you know of this duel? I understand you were present at the time of the challenge!”
Felicity’s eyes shone with excitement. “Mr Winderfield was given no choice, Aunt Eleanor,” she insisted. “Mr Andrew Winderfield, I mean.”
“You probably know more than we do,” Sophia ventured. “After all, Aldridge was second to Weasel; that is, Mr Wesley Winderfield.”
The duchess shook her head. “Aldridge would not discuss dueling with his own mother, Sophia. Especially since he knows I disapprove of the way His Grace encourages Mr Winderfield — Weasel, I should say, for clarity — to behave towards his cousins. I have heard he shot before the end of the count!”
“The scoundrel,” Felicity said. “He has had to leave town, of course, and Lord Aldridge says he will never be his second again, so he had better not go around any more insulting people’s mothers.”
“And quite right,” Eleanor agreed. “The Winderfield brothers are among your admirers, are they not?” She was looking at her tea cup, so could have been referring to either sister.
Sophia, who was still smarting from her brother’s lecture about not encouraging the possibly base-born sons of the Earl of Sutton to dangle after Felicity, said, “We see them from time to time at Society affairs. But we leave for Bath this week, Aunt Eleanor, so I imagine we will not come across them until next Season, by which time this controversy about their birth should be resolved.”
The duchess, whose spy network in Society must be the envy of governments everywhere, did not comment on what she must know: that ‘from time to time’ meant nearly every event she and Felicity had attended all Season, since she first met Lord Elfingham, the older brother, in a small village in Oxfordshire. He had snatched a child from the path of two runaway carriages and ridden away with her heart. If he was courting either of the sisters, it would be Felicity, of course: the younger, prettier, more vivacious one. Sophia had no intention of discussing any of that.
Perhaps Aunt Eleanor understood, for she changed the subject. “I hope you will be back in London for the meeting of our philanthropic committee in September, my dears. I think you will like what I have in mind.”
***
Sophia will be part of the organising committee for Aunt Eleanor’s house party, which was featured in Holly and Hopeful Hearts. Watch this year for To Win a Lady, the novel-length form of my novella from that collection, starring Lady Sophia Belvoir and James Lord Elfingham.