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

Annabel 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 Annabel with glintier eyes than ever. Annabel sucked 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 men 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.

Annabel swallowed. When Newbury chortled, or really, when he moved in any way, 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 genial slap on the back.

“Oh, I’m thinking,” Lord Newbury said. He turned toward Annabel, 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 gentlemen, of course,” Lady Vickers said, holding out her glass to whichever gentleman might reach it first to refill. “A lady must always be thinking.”