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friends, I’m certain of that. I daresay I will need a friend. Particularly one I can share confidences and secrets with. I suppose that’s the only real, well, requirement if you will, that I have for you. I need you to keep my confidences, whatever they may be. I would like your promise to keep my secrets.”
    â€œYes, well, of course.” Clara’s brow furrowed. “Do you have many secrets?”
    â€œNot yet, but I intend to,” Lucy said firmly. “I have any number of friends at home, but I have never had a truly good friend before to tell my secrets to. Nor do I have a sister, but I have always wanted one.” She knew she was talking entirely too fast, but she had the tendency to do that when she was excited, in spite of her mother’s best efforts to curb her enthusiasm. Babbling, Mother called it. But Mother wasn’t here and there was nothing more exhilarating than the feeling of freedom that had filled her the moment the doors had closed behind Jackson and his family. “I have brothers, four of them. They’re all quite tall and as charming as they are handsome. But I am the youngest in the family and the only girl, and they refuse to accept that I am no longer a child. Do you have family, Clara?”
    â€œNo.” She shook her head. “My mother died when I was very young and my father passed away a number of years ago. I lost my only brother as well a few years ago.”
    â€œI am so sorry for your loss.” Lucy cast her a sympathetic look. “I’m not sure what I would do without my family, although they can be most annoying, and I am delighted that, at least for now, I do not have them hovering over me. My brothers are extremely protective, and they and my parents would have some sort of apoplectic fit if they realized Mr. Channing’s mother was no longer accompanying me.”
    â€œShouldn’t you tell them?” Clara said slowly.
    â€œOh, I have, more or less. I did write to them.” She waved off the question. “Admittedly, I might have been extremely vague and they might not have understood completely.” She smiled in an overly innocent manner.
    Clara stared.
    â€œYou see, there are things I wish to do and I can’t do them under the watchful eyes of my family. Between my parents and my brothers and Jackson, of course, I have never really had the opportunity to do anything the least bit, oh, unexpected. I have never had a chance to be even a little independent. My life was entirely planned out for me and I have always been too well behaved to protest. For years it was assumed that Jackson and I would marry. And now Jackson has fallen in love with someone else and gone off to find his own adventures and I . . .” Once again the blissful sense of liberty washed through her. “I am free.”
    â€œI gather you are not particularly upset that you and Mr. Channing are not going to wed.”
    â€œGoodness, no, not in the least. In fact, Jackson and I both, through the years, found all sorts of very sound reasons to postpone an official engagement, which no one ever seemed to mind really, although admittedly, in the last year or two, my mother has been getting the tiniest bit cranky about it. After all, I am nearly twenty-four and most of the women I know who are my age have already wed and are busy producing one offspring after another. In my mother’s eyes I am perilously close to being a spinster, which distresses her but doesn’t bother me at all.”
    â€œDon’t you wish to marry?”
    â€œCertainly someday, but I see no need now to rush into anything that will last the rest of my life. No.” Lucy shook her head. “I am relieved for both of us and happy for Jackson that he has found someone he truly cares for even if, at the moment, they are not together. But they will be eventually. I don’t doubt that for a moment. It’s obviously true love and nothing can deny