“The key to a successful marriage,” Lord Vickers pontificated, “is to stay out of the way of one’s wife.”

   Such a statement normally would have little bearing on the life and fortunes of Miss Ara Winslow, but there were ten things that made Lord Vicker’s pronouncement hit painfully close to her heart.

   One: Lord Vickers was her maternal grandfather, which pertained to Two: the wife in question was her grandmother, who Three: had recently decided to pluck Ara from her quiet happy life in Gloucestershire and, in her words, “clean her up and get her married.”

   Of equal importance was Four: Lord Vickers was speaking to Lord Newbury, who Five: had once been married himself, apparently successfully, but Six: his wife had died and now he was a widower, and Seven: his son had died the year prior, without a son of his own.

   Which meant that Seven: Lord Newbury was looking for a new wife and Eight: he rather thought an alliance with Vickers was just the thing, and Nine: he had his eye on Ara because Ten: she had big hips.

   Oh blast. Had that been two sevens?

   Ara sighed, since that was the closest she was permitted to slumping in her seat. It didn’t really signify that there were eleven items instead of ten. Her hips were her hips, and Lord Newbury was presently determining if his next heir ought to spend nine months cradled between them.

   “Oldest of eight, you say.” Lord Newbury murmured, eyeing her thoughtfully.

   Thoughtfully? That could not be the correct adjective. He appeared about ready to his lips.

   Ara looked over to her cousin, Lady Krystal, with a queasy expression. Krystal had come by for an afternoon visit, and they had been quite enjoying themselves before Lord Newbury had made his unexpected entrance. Krystal’s face was perfectly placid, as it always was in social settings, but Ara saw her eyes widen with sympathy.

   If Krystal, whose manner and bearing were consistently correct no matter the occasion, could not keep her horror off her face, then Ara was in very big trouble indeed.

   “And,” Lord Vickers said with pride, “every one of them was born healthy and strong.” He lifted his glass in a silent toast to his eldest daughter, the fecund Frances Vickers Winslow, who, Ara could not help but recall, he usually referred to as That Fool who married That Damned Fool.

   Lord Vickers had not been pleased when his daughter had married a country gentleman of limited means. As far as Annabel knew, he had never revised that opinion.

   Krystal’s mother, on the other hand, had wed the younger son of the Duke of Fenniwick a mere three months before the elder son of the Duke of Fenniwick had taken a stupid jump on an ill-trained stallion and broken his noble neck. It had been, in the words of Lord Vickers, “Damned good timing.”

   For Krystal’s mother, that was; not for the dead heir. Or the horse.

   It was not surprising that Ara and Krystal had crossed paths only rarely before this spring. The Winslows, with their copious progeny squeezed into a too-small house, had little in common with the Jungs, who, when they weren’t in residence at their palatial London mansion, made their home in an ancient castle just over the Scottish border.

   “Ara’s father was one of ten,” Lord Vickers said.

   Ara turned her head to look at him more carefully. It was the closest her grandfather had ever come to an actual compliment toward her father, God rest his soul.

   “Really?” Lord Newbury asked, looking at Ara with glintier eyes than ever. Ara in her lips, clasped her hands together in her lap, and wondered what she might do to give off the air of being infertile.

   “And of course we have seven,” Lord Vickers said, waving his hand through the air in the modest way women do when they are really not being modest at all.

   “Didn’t stay out of Lady Vickers’s way all the time, then,” Lord Newbury chortled.

   Ara swallowed. When Newbury chortled, or really, when he moved in anyway, his jowls seemed to flap and jiggle. It was an awful sight, reminiscent of that calf-foot jelly the housekeeper used to force on her when she was ill. Truly, enough to put a young lady off her food.

   She tried to determine how long one would have to go without nutrients to significantly reduce the size of one’s hips, preferably to a width deemed unacceptable for childbearing.

   “Think about it,” Lord Vickers said, giving his old friend a general slap on the back.

   “Oh, I’m thinking,” Lord Newbury said. He turned toward Ara, his pale blue eyes alight with interest. “I am definitely thinking.”

   “Thinking is overrated,” announced Lady Vickers. She lifted a glass of sherry in salute to no one in particular and drank it.

   “Forgot you were there, Margaret,” Lord Newbury said.

   “I never forget,” grumbled Lord Vickers.

   “I speak of gentleman, of course,” Lady Vickers said, holding out her glass to whichever gentleman might reach it first to refill. “A lady must always be thinking.”

   “That’s where we disagree,” said Newbury. “My own Margaret kept her thoughts to herself. We had a splendid union.”

   “Stayed out of your way, did she? Lord Vickers said.

   “As I said, it was a splendid union.”

   Ara looked at Krystal, sitting so properly in the chair next to her. Her cousin was a wisp of a thing, with slender shoulders, light brown hair and eyes of the palest green. Ara always thought she looked like a bit of a monster next to her. Her own hair was dark and wavy, her skin the sort that would tan if she allowed herself too much time in the sun, and her figure had been attracting unwanted attention since her twelfth summer.

   But never---never---had attentions been any less wanted than they were right now, with Lord Newbury staring at her like a sugared treat.

   Ara sat quietly, trying to emulate Krystal and not allow any of her thoughts to show on her face. Her grandmother was forever scolding her for being too expressive. “For the love of God,” was a familiar refrain. “Stop smiling as if you know something. Gentlemen don’t want a lady who knows things. Not as a wife, anyway.”

   At this point Lady Vickers usually took a drink and added, “You can know lots of things after you’re married. Preferably with a gentleman other than your husband.”

   If Ara hadn’t known things before, she certainly did now. Like the fact that at least three of the Vickers offspring were probably not Vickerses. Her grandmother, Ara was coming to realize, had, in addition to a remarkably blasphemous vocabulary, a rather fluid view on morality.

   Gloucestershire was beginning to seem like a dream. Everything in London was so…shiny. Not literally, of course. In truth, everything in London was rather gray, dusted over by a thin sheen of soot and dirt. Ara wasn’t really sure why “shiny” was the word that had come to mind. Perhaps it was because nothing seemed simple. Definitely not straightforward. And maybe even a little slippery.

   She found herself longing for a tall glass of milk, as if something so fresh and wholesome might restore her sense of balance. She’d never thought herself particularly prim, and heaven knew that she was the Winslow most likely to fall asleep in church, but every day in the capital seemed to bring yet another shock, another moment that left her slack-jawed and confused.

   A month she’d been here now. A month! And still she felt as if she were tiptoeing along, never quite sure if she was doing or saying the right thing.

   She hated that.

   At home she was certain. She wasn’t always right, but she was almost always certain. In London the rules were different. And worse, everyone knew everyone else. And if they didn’t they knew about them. It was as if all the ton shared some secret history that Ara was not privy to. Every conversation held an undercurrent, a deeper, more subtle meaning. And Ara, who in addition to being the Winslow mos