Page 66 of A Highly Unlikely Duchess
“Don't say that.”
“I am being realistic,” Euphemia said. “I came to this Season with a very specific intention. I was going to prove to my sisters that love was possible. That marriage did not have to be a negotiation between two families with a reluctant bride in the middle of it.” She looked at her glass. “I have not proven anything. I have, if anything, gathered considerable evidence for the opposing argument.”
“What has happened?” Emily said.
Euphemia shook her head. “I stopped accepting callers.”
Emily looked at her. “All of them?”
“All of them,” Euphemia said firmly. “After the last one, I decided I had reached my limit.”
“What did the last one do?”
Euphemia turned to look at her with a dejected look on her pale face. “He told me that he had always dreamed of a large family.”
“That is not unusual,” Emily said carefully. “Do you not want a large family?”
“He wanted thirteen children!” Euphemia rasped.
Emily blinked.
“Thirteen,” Euphemia said again, in case the number had not landed properly. “He sat there for twenty minutes detailing the lineage of his prize hounds before transitioning seamlessly into his requirement for thirteen children. He had apparently given it considerable thought. He spent the better part of another forty minutes discussing my childbearing capabilities and whether I was of sufficiently robust constitution to manage the undertaking.” She paused. “He did not ask me a single question about anything else.”
Emily stared at her in disbelief.
“I did not receive any callers after that,” Euphemia said simply. “I was terrified.”
“I cannot imagine why,” Emily said, and sighed.
“I have decided that this Season is perhaps not the Season for me. I think I simply need to understand London first. To learn how it works, what it is, and perhaps next Season, or the one after, I will be better prepared for it. This Season I will simply observe.”
“That seems sensible,” Emily said. “But it does not mean you cannot also enjoy yourself. You do not have to be either hunting for a husband or hiding from one. There is space between those two things.”
Euphemia smiled slightly. “Perhaps.” She looked at her hands. “I have also been trying to make new friends. As I said I would. But it is —” She paused. “It is not easy for me. The other young women in the ton have their established circles and their histories together, and I arrive with none of that, and I find I do not always know how to insert myself into a room full of people who already know each other.” She glanced at Emily sideways. “I am better one-to-one. Too many people at once and I go very quiet, and then people decide I am cold or strange... or both.”
“You are neither,” Emily said, giggling.
“It is all right. I have you, and I still have my sisters. That is already more than I had at the beginning of the Season and I am content with it.”
“I am not,” Emily said.
Euphemia looked at her.
“I love our friendship,” Emily said, directly and without any ceremony around it, because it was true, and Euphemia looked like someone who needed to hear a true thing said plainly. “I would not trade it for anything. But I am not content with you being content with only me. You deserve more than one friend in society, Effie. You deserve a whole room full of them.”
Euphemia giggled. “Thank you,” she said quietly.
“You’re very welcome.” Emily smiled. “Shall we go back into the light?”
“Actually,” Euphemia said, stopping her. “There was something I wanted to tell you. Something I heard this week that I thought you should know about before someone else told you less kindly.”
Emily tilted her head sideways. “What is it?”
“There is a rumor going around,” Euphemia said. “That you have a child. Out of wedlock.”
Emily felt as though the floor had suddenly turned into water. “What?”
“They are saying,” Euphemia continued, carefully. “That you went into the marriage with a child that is not the Duke's. That the child existed before the marriage. That you were pregnant before the marriage and hid it. That the Duke either did not know or did not care, and that either way the question of the child's parentage is —” She stopped. “I am sorry. I thought you should hear it from me rather than from someone who would enjoy telling you.”
