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It was a reputation that had been fanned in no small part by the former Miss Hayes. But that he was not a small man was indeed true, although it was only one of the reasons his longtime patron found him irritating at that particular moment.
    “They must be small-minded at least if they actually believe Carolina Broad is as fine as they pretend to think she is,” Penelope snapped. Fashion was vicious; it moved quickly, she knew, but she had not been in bed so long, and she was still better looking than any of them. She remembered when Carolina was just another disgruntled maid, let go by the Hollands—but that was before she had befriended the old bachelor Carey Lewis Longhorn and somehow or other persuaded him to leave her his vast fortune. She had been playing heiress at first, but now she really was one, and the evidence was above them in coffered ceilings as well as on the handsome façade that boasted her new address. It was stomach-turning how formal she had been with Penelope—who had done so much for her—and how quickly she had excused herself to chase after Leland Bouchard.
    For Penelope, the agony of having stood so long in a room while being paid so little attention was far greater than any that could have resulted from a physical blow. She was dressed in eye-catching vermilion that enveloped her like plumage, and the lace that sheathed her arms and the suede that circled her waist revealed how dainty she had become since she last had been seen out. Her dark hair was up above her face like a cloud at midnight; her eyes looked acutely blue lined in black, as they were now.
    “I never knew how unkind New York could be until today,” she concluded bitterly. For although it was not the kind of thing that was printed in society pages, the reason Penelope had been confined to her bedroom for so long was that she had lost what would have been her and Henry Schoonmaker’s first child. And to make it all the more pitiable, the whole unfortunate episode had occurred while her dashing husband was away at war.
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    Or not really at war, because Henry’s father, William, had arranged for him to be sent to Cuba, where the danger had mostly passed. And no baby had truly been lost, because she had never actually been with child. That had been a story she cooked up to bind Henry to her and punish the irritating girl he persisted in believing himself in love with. She could not really have been with child, because she and Henry did not really act like man and wife in that sense, except on one occasion, in Florida, when he had been very drunk. For a moment the muscles of Penelope’s face relaxed and her blood warmed at the thought of the summer when Henry and she had been intimate in every back corner of their families’ homes they could manage…but she stopped herself. She was in a room of people incapable of sympathy, but apparently quite capable of delighting in her downfall, and she could not afford to grow wistful.
    “Look!” Buck was laboring for a cheerful tone.
    After a stubborn pause, she did turn her gaze in the direction Buck had indicated. There, through the crowd of red-faced people shrieking in delight at whatever inanity, moving about the dance floor gracelessly—or, she supposed, with what had come to pass for grace in Mrs. Schoonmaker’s absence—
    stood a tall, broad fellow in shiny black garb with eyes almost as strikingly blue as her own. There was something wholesome, but also exotic, about his chestnut hair and the sparkle of his smile.
    “At what exactly?” Penelope replied in the well-practiced voice that implied she was not impressed.
    “It’s the prince of Bavaria.” Buck inclined himself toward his old friend and continued in a confidential tone: “He’s been touring the New World for some time. They say he is soon to be engaged to that little slip of a thing at his side—French, can’t be more than